Interview with Jean Ende, Author of Houses of Detention

Houses of Detention

by Jean Ende

Like all immigrants who flee persecution, when the Rosens escaped the Nazis they hoped life in America would be perfect. And for a while it seemed like it was. The men started businesses and provided comfortable homes with a mink stole in every hall closet, the women provided abundant helpings of high carb food and Nobel-worthy diplomacy, and grandma finished a bottle of whiskey every week and preserved old world traditions.

But then cracks began to appear. American-born teenager, Rebecca, pushed boundaries so far that the family story suddenly included the police and juvenile justice system; her father, a formerly revered Talmudic scholar, continually mourned his loss of status in this country’s money-grubbing society, and a woman with stricter religious beliefs married into the Rosen family, causing near-catastrophic rifts in a group that appeared uniform to outsiders.

Although the shadow of the Holocaust is always present, this is frequently a humorous book. People who eat frozen bagels are condemned; Cossacks with fiery swords, once known for burning Jewish villages, are now Bar Mitzvah waiters carrying flaming desserts; the shiksa chippie dating the synagogue vice-president has a poodle-shaped purse that barks in French and no one understands how WASPs can comfortably wear leather loafers without socks.

“Jean Ende’s Houses of Detention takes us deep into a historical American Jewish experience and a family working through the generational trauma of the Holocaust. Maybe they could be called typical, but every family’s tsuris is complicated. Ende has portrayed the lives of this family in a raw and unvarnished way, bringing a rare truth to this engrossing novel.” — Judy L. Mandel, New York Times bestselling author of Replacement Child and White Flag

“To read Jean Ende’s remarkable debut novel is to pull up a seat to a dining room table in the Bronx of the mid-20th century, a table packed with colorful characters and their plentiful gossip. Beneath all that kibitzing, however, is the real story: the essential and often heartrending tale of one family of Jewish immigrants searching for a new American life in the shadow of genocide and exodus.” — Stefan Merrill Block, author, The Story of Forgetting and Oliver Loving

Author Interview

1. At What Point Did You decide to be an author? What was your first publication?

I’ve always been an author.  I remember writing the fourth grade play because that guaranteed I’d have the leading role.  When no one wanted to pick the chubby girl for their team in summer camp I became the bunk poet, wrote the songs that we marched to during color war.  My first professional fiction publication was in Gastronomica, Journal of Food and Culture. It was a funny story about how foodies, people obsessed with special, organic food, were driving me nuts.

 

2. What do you do when a new idea jumps out at you while you’re still working on a book/ other project?

I stop what I’m doing, write at least a few paragraphs about the new idea and then file it away in a special file that I’ll never be able to find again.  Then I spend the rest of my writing time trying to refind the project I was working on originally.

 

3. Describe your writing process

I just start writing.  Opening sentences are usually available in my mind before anything else.  When I run out of steam I go back to the beginning and rewrite it, continuing until I reach the place I’d stopped before.  Then I skip a few lines and try to continue.  Occasionally I get a terrific idea for the ending, write it down and try to figure out what could have happened before in order to reach that point.  Frequently the two don’t match.  Then I have to scrap the ending or the beginning or just make them two separate stories.

 

4. Do you identify with your main character?

Totally!  Everything I write is about me.  Who I am, who I wish I was, who I’m afraid of becoming.

 

5. Describe the book in 10 words or less

family saga, three generations of a Jewish immigrant family in New York

 

6. What is (one of ) your favorite lines from your book?

If my grandma had a penis she’d be my grandfather

 

7. What is most challenging about writing a novel?

Getting it published and recognized and sold.

 

About the Author

Jean Ende is a former news reporter and press secretary for the City of New York, trying to exorcise her background by writing fiction largely based on her immigrant Jewish family. Roughly two dozen of Jean’s short stories have been published in various magazines and anthologies, and her work has been recognized by major literary competitions in the US and England. Houses of Detention is her debut novel.

https://www.jeanendeauthor.com/

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