Have you ever felt a kinship with someone you have never even met?

Clare Kinberg, publisher and editor of the Washtenaw Jewish News, never crossed paths with her estranged Aunt Rose when she was alive, but Kinberg learned about all the connections and similarities the two had through her investigation into Rose’s life. Kinberg tells their intertwining stories in her new book, By the Waters of Paradise: An American Story of Racism and Rupture in a Jewish Family.

By the Waters of Paradise, though nonfiction, reads like a slowly unfolding mystery as Kinberg puts together clues about her aunt’s life. Kinberg also examines the broader context of the times in which she and Rose have lived. One throughline is traced from the racial tensions in St. Louis, where both of them are from, to across the country in the 20th century, from violence to racial covenants in deeds. Racism and antisemitism—even within their own family—have troubled both of their lives. Kinberg offers reflections on how distressing racist and antisemitic beliefs and actions were and are.

Both Rose and Kinberg entered interracial relationships—another throughline. Kinberg looks at how her own life parallels Rose’s, and at her own identity as she formed an interracial, queer family. Their chosen families influenced where each of them built their lives—coincidentally, both in Michigan at different points in time.

Finding family secrets and evidence of the life Aunt Rose led after she was estranged from the Kinbergs required determination and sleuthing on the author's part as well as some serendipity. At the part in the book when Kinberg is visiting cemeteries in Cass County in 2018, she reflects on her research and how strongly she has wanted to connect with Rose:

I had spent almost two years praying and begging for clues that could lead me to know my Aunt Rose. Maybe because her place in my family constellation is a gaping hole and I yearned for kinship with her, I wanted to know more about Aunt Rose than can be known about another person: I wanted to know her thoughts. What did she think about as she fell asleep? What kept her hands busy during the long Michigan winter nights? What occupied her mind as she looked out her window at the trees along the shores of Paradise Lake?

Kinberg even examines possible narratives for Rose’s life, sometimes in her voice. She follows what those lives would have looked like for Aunt Rose until there is new information that leads her in another direction.

The search for Rose’s story leads to bits of information and some dead ends. After finding the person who lived in the house where Aunt Rose lived, Kinberg experiences the following setback:

I wonder, sometimes, whether their unwillingness to speak with me further is an attempt to honor Aunt Rose’s wishes—whether my being a Kinberg, from the family that disowned her, is the reason they’ve decided to keep the details of her life concealed.

Despite seeing doors close, Kinberg’s curiosity and determination to learn about Aunt Rose kept the momentum. Kinberg narrates how her own life intersects with Aunt Rose “outside of time.” She writes:

Imagining this move, from Chicago to Paradise Lake in Vandalia via Benton Harbor, brings me so close to Aunt Rose that I can almost inhabit her. I had moved from St. Louis to the Ozarks and also to rural Oregon. In the countryside, the soothing quiet and oxygen-filled air, the morning sun glinting off the dew, seemed to bring my soul to the surface of my skin. Aunt Rose, did you feel this, too?

When I discovered that the aunt whom I’d never met lived most of her life in what was then the most racially mixed rural county in the entire Midwest, I was awestruck. She had found what I had been looking for.

Kinberg has devoted her life to living out her beliefs, which is a quality of Aunt Rose that she admires. Throughout the book, Kinberg’s strong tie to Aunt Rose in multiple facets of her life drives her research and the story.

Kinberg and I corresponded by email for our interview. We talked about her decision to write the book, the research she conducted, what the story means to her, the book’s engagement with racism and antisemitism, what she is reading, and what is next.

Q: By the Waters of Paradise is a deeply personal book recounting your journey of learning about your Aunt Rose. Your acknowledgements section mentions the support you received while writing from your family and writing group. When and how did you know it would be a book?
A: I had been a journal editor for decades, but I’d never worked on or edited a book before. Still, I know the great distance between an idea for a piece of writing and getting something published. I’ve written several essays and shorter pieces, but before I stood on my Aunt Rose’s unmarked grave in Southwest Michigan, I’d never even thought about writing a book. Then, really, while I was there the very first time in 2016, I knew I would make her story into a book. I gave myself a deadline of three years. It took nine years of somewhat continuous research, writing, editing, etc.

Q: As a reader, I felt like I was on the journey with you, with each new piece of information filling in the story. How did you determine what details to share and at what point in the book?
A: I’m really glad you experienced reading the book in that way. The way I told the story—its flow and the order of the revelation of my discoveries—morphed several times as I wrote and edited the book. I didn’t put together the introductory chapter until near the end of the editing process. At that point, I knew that I could allude to detailed information that was coming later in the telling. I didn’t research the book in any kind of chronological order, but I did keep a timeline of Aunt Rose’s life close at hand, and I created an outline for chapters based on her life.

Q: You published parts of the book serially in the Washtenaw Jewish News. In what ways did incrementally releasing the story influence how you told it?
A: When I began publishing the Washtenaw Jewish News in 2019, I was three years into writing the book and very far from getting out the story I wanted to tell. I couldn’t see the endpoint, but I knew unless I created some synergy between the newspaper and the book writing, I would never finish the book. So, I made a commitment to myself to publish 1,500 to 2,000 words of the story each month in the newspaper. It was a very strict, self-imposed deadline. And I did that for 26 months, published under the title “Looking for Rose.” The book was not finished then; I just couldn’t do installments anymore. But enough was then written that I knew I could finish it. I wanted to make each newspaper installment discrete, written around a theme in addition to telling a part of Rose’s story. Thinking continuously about why I was telling the story, in addition to telling the story of my search for Rose’s life, was very helpful.

For instance, the 17th installment of “Looking for Rose” (May 2021) focused on Aunt Rose and her husband deciding to buy a few acres of land in southwest Michigan. I thought about all the reasons an interracial family would make a move from urban to rural. I learned that in the 1940s, there was a daily ferry across Lake Michigan between Chicago, where they were living, and Benton Harbor. This helped me think about the mechanics of finding a new place to live. The themes of why and how we choose “home” are developed throughout the book.

Q: One aspect of the book that I really enjoyed was your investigation of the story, including going to cemeteries and the Recorder of Deeds Office in Cass County. Do you continue to look for information about Aunt Rose?
A: I never found out as much as I wanted to about Rose’s life. I dreamed of renting one of the cottages on the shore of Paradise Lake and living there for a month, or even a week. Maybe I still could. I could give myself a retreat to write a coda for By the Waters of Paradise.

Q: Many things cannot be known about Aunt Rose’s life owing to the passage of time and lack of records. You write about Rose and the Kinberg family in St. Louis by noting, “I want to know if there was a moment when their lives diverged, but I can’t.” In some ways, it seems that you have made peace with this by focusing on your connections to Rose and the importance of telling the story. What did you learn from finding and writing Rose’s story?
A: I so deeply regretted not having met her before she died in 1982, when I was 27. Even more, I regretted not asking my mother or father what they knew of Rose, or any one of my aunts or cousins of the older generation. I resigned myself to doing deep dives into the context of Aunt Rose’s life and that of her husband, Mr. Arnwine. The history I learned of the Exodusters and the fusgeyers, of the Double V movement during WWII, of the Kentucky Raid of 1847, the beginnings of Hillsdale College, and even the story of mambo barbeque sauce, changed my understandings of the vicissitudes of history and change.

Q: Racism against Jewish and Black identities is a pernicious part of this story and, unfortunately, life in general. The stories in this book find racism at each new development in ways not well reflected in the mainstream historical narrative, but no less painful. What conversations and growth about racism have you seen this story and book generate so far?
A: While writing the book, I found that people did not want to remember or talk about instances in their own lives when they either were perpetrators or targets of racism or antisemitism. Readers of By the Waters of Paradise have now told me several stories from their own lives. Reading the stories in the book definitely has led to readers remembering things from their own lives. I hope this leads to growth, but I don’t know.

Q: By the Waters of Paradise weaves through not only your aunt’s past but also historical events and your own life, both past and present. It is both an account of what you could learn about Aunt Rose and an autobiography of your related experiences. In working as an editor as you do, the focus is often on others’ stories. What was it like to switch to telling your family’s and your own story?
A: The addition of more stories from my own life was the last part of the book I wrote. And I only added them because my editor at Wayne State University Press suggested that I write more about myself. I was reluctant to write about myself. But the question that dogged me throughout the writing process was, “Why does telling Aunt Rose’s story feel so urgent to me?” I had to try to convey that to readers by connecting her life to mine.

Q: Earlier, we talked about the Washtenaw Jewish News in relation to your book. Tell us about your work as the editor of the Washtenaw Jewish News.
A: I am so grateful for my work as the editor and publisher of the Washtenaw Jewish News, a monthly local print newspaper, because I get to bring all of my skills and experience to work each day. I own the paper and so have the freedom to bring my entire self to its publication. I enjoy soliciting writing from a wide array of people. The news and opinions in the WJN are hyperlocal, cultural, and related to current events. I include poetry, excerpts from books, restaurant reviews, and obituaries in addition to announcements of upcoming events. In many ways, the WJN is like an old-fashioned local newspaper, which I read many of for By the Waters of Paradise. The Cassopolis Vigilant in the 1940s reported things like social visits and what was served at church luncheons. The Chicago Defender was unapologetic about covering news from the perspective of African Americans. These old papers were very important to the communities they were a part of, and I hope that’s true of the WJN as well.

Q: I like to ask authors what is on their stack to read. What are you reading and recommending?
A: I love that question, too. I stick almost entirely to history and memoir. My current bookshelf includes Nothing More of This Land: Community, Power and the Search for Indigenous Identity by Joseph Lee. It’s similar in structure to my book, history and memoir. I’m listening to The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States by Walter Johnson. I’m glad I didn’t read it before finishing my book; though it covers some of the same events in history, I was able to dig in from a much more personal angle. Though it is not my usual genre, I was at a fantasy book sale the other day and picked up a mystery/fantasy novel, The Big Cinch by Kathy L. Brown. It takes place in 1920s St. Louis, which hooked me. For recommendations, I just finished reading Shaul Magid’s The Necessity of Exile: Essays From a Distance, if you care to take a dive into religious Jewish critics of Zionism. And I’m looking forward to the forthcoming Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund by Molly Crabapple. I don’t do a lot of light reading. I watch TV for that.

Q: What has the publication of this book been like for you? What is next?
A: I’m planning a trip to the Pacific Northwest for a book tour in the spring. I will be doing a podcast with the Jewish Women’s Archive in January, and the online journal of Reconstructing Judaism, Evolve, is publishing an excerpt from the book in February. I hope these will lead to opportunities to Zoom into book clubs that are reading the book. I really thought this book would be my one and only, but I’m working on something again. I may be working in “installments” again, this time on Substack, because I know it’s a method that works for me. I need some kind of ongoing feedback when I’m working on a long project. 

Martha Stuit is a former reporter and current librarian.