I write his­tor­i­cal fan­ta­sy nov­els, which means I spend an awful lot of time on research.

I fell into this par­tic­u­lar aspect of my career com­plete­ly by acci­dent. I was a grad­u­ate stu­dent when the idea for my first nov­el, The Golem and the Jin­ni, came to me. I chose 1899 Man­hat­tan as the set­ting pret­ty much on a whim. I did­n’t real­ize at the time just how much I’d need to learn in order to write my tale of Cha­va, the golem, and Ahmad, the jin­ni, two super­nat­ur­al immi­grants who must learn how to sur­vive in a human world.

What fol­lowed was a crash course edu­ca­tion in ear­ly-twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry New York City, first for The Golem and the Jin­ni, then its sequel, The Hid­den Palace, and final­ly the con­clu­sion to the tril­o­gy, The Gates of Mid­night. My research accu­mu­lat­ed in lay­ers, like an oil paint­ing. I began with an overview of the city and its neigh­bor­hoods, the social ten­sions of the day, and oth­er larg­er issues faced by its inhab­i­tants. Then, once I had a sol­id foun­da­tion, I looked for more spe­cif­ic details to add tex­ture and col­or. This is always a tricky job, since it’s easy to drown a sto­ry in all the fas­ci­nat­ing bits of research I encounter. When read­ers ask how I decide which par­tic­u­lars to use, I usu­al­ly talk about the small details that tell a big­ger sto­ry. Like the phar­ma­cists who kept clocks on their coun­ters, so their cus­tomers — many of whom could­n’t afford pock­et-watch­es — had a rea­son to stop in while run­ning their errands. Or how you could tell if some­one had spent the night beneath the ele­vat­ed train tracks by the cin­der-burns and soot marks on their clothing.

It’s not a bad answer, I think; but late­ly it’s occurred to me that it’s incom­plete. I ought to say that with enough research, it’s pos­si­ble to build not just vivid set­tings but entire char­ac­ters. Which means that real­ly, I ought to tell them about Krein­del Altschul.

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At first, I only cre­at­ed Krein­del because The Hid­den Palace need­ed anoth­er golem.

The plot of The Hid­den Palace involves Cha­va and Ahmad meet­ing oth­ers like them­selves: a male golem and a female jin­ni, respec­tive­ly. A fun idea, I thought, but then came the logis­tics. Who would be this new golem’s mas­ter? A child, I decid­ed. (I don’t remem­ber why exact­ly; it’s very pos­si­ble that I was influ­enced by Paul Wegen­er’s 1920 film Der Golem, with its arrest­ing image of a lit­tle girl offer­ing an apple to the tit­u­lar mon­ster.) But that only led to more ques­tions. How had the child end­ed up with the golem? Where would she keep it? What on earth would she do with it?

The best thing about his­tor­i­cal research (besides its end­less oppor­tu­ni­ties for pro­cras­ti­na­tion) is that once you’ve learned enough about a par­tic­u­lar time and place, the sto­ry and the research start to attract each oth­er like mag­nets. And as I pon­dered the prob­lem of the lit­tle girl and her golem, I began to think more and more about the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.

I’d first learned about the Hebrew Orphan Asy­lum while read­ing about the dis­parate Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties in Man­hat­tan and how they per­ceived each oth­er. Two of the most dis­sim­i­lar of these com­mu­ni­ties were the long-estab­lished Reform Jew­ish fam­i­lies of the Upper East Side and the more recent­ly arrived Ortho­dox Jews of the Low­er East Side. The two com­mu­ni­ties clashed with each oth­er, often bit­ter­ly, over the ques­tion of assim­i­la­tion. For many recent immi­grants from the Old World, to adapt to a ​“more Amer­i­can” exis­tence would be a repu­di­a­tion of the way of life that had sus­tained them through repres­sion and pogroms. The much more cos­mopoli­tan Reform Jews, mean­while, tend­ed to view Amer­i­ca’s mod­ern cus­toms and lib­er­ties as oppor­tu­ni­ties to be seized for the ben­e­fit of all.

The Hebrew Orphan Asy­lum was one of the most vis­i­ble sym­bols of this con­flict. Estab­lished by a com­mit­tee of Reform bene­fac­tors and advi­sors, the H. O. A. took in chil­dren from des­ti­tute Ortho­dox fam­i­lies and raised them in a cur­ricu­lum of Reform litur­gy and Amer­i­can civic engage­ment. The H. O. A. was lit­er­al­ly a life­saver for any num­ber of chil­dren, thanks to the med­ical atten­tion and prop­er nutri­tion it made sure they had, but the chil­dren lost pre­cious links to their fam­i­lies, such as their mas­tery of Yid­dish, and often left the orphan­age feel­ing alien­at­ed from the Ortho­dox world and unsure of their place in the Reform one.

The more I con­sid­ered the Hebrew Orphan Asy­lum, the more it seemed to fit per­fect­ly into the sto­ry I was writ­ing. I’d already decid­ed that assim­i­la­tion would be a pri­ma­ry theme of The Hid­den Palace, and I need­ed some­where for this lit­tle girl and her golem to live. And would­n’t a loom­ing Goth­ic orphan­age in Hamil­ton Heights make for a fab­u­lous set­ting? The lit­tle girl became Krein­del Altschul, the daugh­ter of an Ortho­dox rab­bi; the golem’s name was Yos­se­le. Her father had built Yos­se­le before per­ish­ing in a ten­e­ment fire, leav­ing Krein­del as Yos­se­le’s mas­ter. And then, of course, where should Krein­del end up but at my light­ly fic­tion­al­ized ver­sion of the H.O.A., with her hulk­ing com­pan­ion hid­den away in the basement?

With that resolved, I began the process of turn­ing Krein­del from a plot device into a true char­ac­ter in her own right. Slow­ly, over drafts and rewrites, she became a neglect­ed prodi­gy, a silent, watch­ful girl who teach­es her­self to read Hebrew and study Tal­mud, even help­ing her father build Yos­se­le when it becomes clear that he can’t accom­plish it alone. By the time that Cha­va arrives at the Hebrew Orphan Asy­lum and meets Krein­del (and, more cat­a­stroph­i­cal­ly, Yos­se­le), Krein­del is a young woman of eigh­teen, stub­born­ly keep­ing to her father’s tra­di­tions while long­ing for the edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able to Reform women. Yos­se­le, her ever-watch­ful guardian, is her only friend as well as a dan­ger­ous respon­si­bil­i­ty. At the nov­el­’s end — don’t wor­ry, I won’t spoil the good stuff — Krein­del is still unsure of her path, but no longer has to man­age it alone.

By the time I fin­ished The Hid­den Palace, I’d grown so attached to Krein­del that when it came time to write the last book of the tril­o­gy, I knew I had to bring her back. In The Gates of Mid­night, Krein­del is now the head­mistress of an Ortho­dox girls’ orphan­age in Brook­lyn, and she’s just as stub­born as ever. Her con­tentious rela­tion­ship with the orphan­age’s head rab­bi puts her job at con­tin­u­al risk; she’s increas­ing­ly iso­lat­ed in her pri­vate life as well, espe­cial­ly after she and Cha­va have a painful falling-out. Her faith and her stud­ies sus­tain her, but her insis­tence on inde­pen­dence puts her at the fringes of her com­mu­ni­ty. Above all she longs for a way to be her­self with­out con­tra­dic­tions, and for whole­ness after a life­time of loss and con­flict — a desire that will tempt her into dan­ger­ous ter­ri­to­ry before the sto­ry’s end.

Even now, when I look back, I’m a lit­tle flab­ber­gast­ed by Krein­del Altschul. I can trace every step of how she was built — the plot dilem­ma, the film still, the heaps of research — but what accounts for her stead­fast faith, her icon­o­clast spir­it? Did she add those her­self, when I was­n’t look­ing? Krein­del only ever exist­ed in my head, and yet I find myself hop­ing that she likes the end­ing I wrote for her. Cha­va and Ahmad are decid­ed­ly the cen­tral char­ac­ters of The Golem and the Jin­ni tril­o­gy, but the spir­i­tu­al heart of the tale might belong to Kreindel.