A Wall of Light - Edeet Ravel [0]
Ten Thousand Lovers
Look For Me
A Wall of Light
Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth
FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS
The Thrilling Life of Pauline de Lammermoor
The Mysterious Adventures of Pauline Bovary
The Secret Journey of Pauline Siddhartha
The Saver
Held
VIKING CANADA
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published 2011
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (RRD)
Copyright © Edeet Ravel, 2011
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
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LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Ravel, Edeet, 1955–
The last rain / Edeet Ravel.
ISBN 978-0-670-06866-1
I. Title.
PS8585.A8715L38 2011 C813'.54 C2011-900749-5
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for my sister Sara
Author’s Note
I began working on this story thirty-five years ago, when I was twenty. Written in the voice of a young girl, it was based on my childhood at Kibbutz Sasa in the northern Galilee, with an eighteen-month interlude in Montreal. I felt wrenched from my home when my parents left the kibbutz for good; I had just turned seven and for the next few years I daydreamed continually about returning. I never did return.
The subject of this backward look has remained consistent over the years, but changing perceptions have no doubt affected the child’s voice. I have also added to her account stray sections of what the poet Carl Sandburg called the labyrinth of sliding doors that is our collective past. Because no analogy can capture with finality what is never final, Sandburg contemplates another image: a book of ciphers, with its code buried inside a cave in the Sargasso Sea. The only way I can think of to explore that labyrinth, those ciphers, is through fiction.
I have capitalized several terms that take on special meaning in kibbutz culture: Children’s House, Group, Minder, Room, Dining Hall, Kitchen, Guard, Pioneer, Hike, Wake-Up, Bedding-Down. The First Rain and the Last Rain have proper names in Hebrew—yoreh and malkosh.
In past centuries, literary works were dedicated to kings and queens. You, readers, are today’s royalty; may my efforts please you.
Dramatis Personae
Eldar Members (selected)
The Satie Family
Naftali Satie (“Nat”/“Ricky”)
Varda Klein Satie (“Avra”/“Rita”)
David Satie (b 1950)
Dori Satie (b 1955)
Sara Satie (b 1959)
Dori’s Group
Lulu
Skye
Gilead
Simon
Elan
Jonathan
Hannah
David’s Group