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How a night of mate swapping leads an LA woman on a new path in ‘Olive Days’

Jessica Elisheva Emerson didn’t have to look far for a setting while writing “Olive Days.”

Her debut novel is set in L.A.’s Pico-Robertson neighborhood and follows Rina Kirsch, a Modern Orthodox Jewish woman. Struggling with her atheism, she’s surprised when her husband asks her to participate in a wife swap. Rina reluctantly agrees, and the experience leads her to take up painting, which she had abandoned previously. She and her married teacher, Will Ochoa, embark on an affair, forcing Rina to choose between her unhappy marriage and an unknown path.

Emerson, an Arizona native, lived in L.A. when she wrote “Olive Days” — not far from Pico-Robertson, where she would often shop for her kosher home. While writing the book, she got the chance to revisit other parts of Southern California that she loved, not just through the eyes of a resident, but through the eyes of an author.

“It was such a gift to go into these Los Angeles neighborhoods that I loved with fresh, differently observant eyes,” she says. “There are some scenes set along the Pacific Palisades Park, and I never had to go there specifically because that’s just the place I take myself to walk. There were also, at one time, scenes set at the walk around the Rose Bowl, at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains, which is another place I just like to be.”

Emerson answered questions about “Olive Days” via Zoom from her home in Tucson. This conversation has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.

Q: How did the character of Rina come to you initially?

It started with an anecdote. Not long after I moved into the Pico-Robertson neighborhood, where I lived for four or five years of my life, I heard a story from a young unmarried guy that I knew about a wife swap in the community. I was like, “Yes, go on.” I asked around and I ended up taking a few people out to coffees and lunches, and I was able to hear the story a few times, although never in the first person.

The story stuck with me, but I didn’t actually know what the character was. It was much harder to come to the character. For several years I was kicking around the idea of a book where there was a love triangle between a woman, her husband, and another man from the swap. It took me a while to get to Rina. I just kept thinking that for some people, a consensual wife swap might be great, maybe it would be beneficial to their relationship. I don’t come at it with any judgment. But I wondered about a woman for whom it wouldn’t be, specifically because of the parameters of her culture and her life and her upbringing. And that’s how I got to think about Rina. I don’t really believe this thing that characters walk into your head. I made her, and then the life that she has. I really thought it would be so challenging to be a creative person who took the least creative path available to them, essentially. That’s sort of how she came into being, although as with anything you write, I spent a lot of time editing her to get her just right.

Q: Rina is an atheist, but still goes through the motions of being devout. What do you think keeps her engaging in that world?

That’s probably the piece of the story that I relate to most closely. Although I’m not a Modern Orthodox Jew, I am an atheist, and I write and speak about that openly, so that was easy for me to access. When I was 12 years old, I came to my parents’ dinner table, and said, “I don’t think I believe in God,” and they said, “Let’s talk about that.” Would that have been the same kind of reaction in the community that Rena came from? I did find it easy to access why things would still be meaningful to her, because my Jewishness, although it doesn’t look like Rina’s, is extraordinarily meaningful in the absence of theology.

One of the things that I thought about a lot is this idea that the biblical character of Jacob wrestles with God. I would say that Rina is a wrestler. She’s moved to non-belief, but she’s comfortable in a place of wrestling with this, with God and with other things. She thinks about a lot, and it doesn’t take any of the meaning out of it. It’s interesting because you could also talk about guilt in this book, and I really tried to make a conscientious effort in most places to keep guilt out of Rina’s equation for why she remained Jewish. She doesn’t feel motivated by guilt, although she does feel motivated by time, by the weight of her ancestors and generations.

Q: She’s reluctant when David suggests the swap, but she agrees to go along with it. What made her decide to give in?

She got worn down. Look, it’s consensual, and I always try to be really clear about that. She agreed, and that’s actually part of her own internal math in the aftermath of this, that she agreed, she consented to it. She tried her best argument against it, which is that she doesn’t think it’s Halachically sound. David has his own answers for that. And it’s not that she doesn’t care. I just think that she’s extremely suspicious that it will be harder on him, or not as gratifying for him as he thinks, and that it will cause trouble. I also think that it becomes a convenient thing for her. The wife swap is a demarcation point, but she was already in a bad marriage.

Q: Her affair with Will is obviously physical, but it feels like it’s guided by something more than just desire and lust. There’s a deeper connection there. What is it about Will that makes Rina fall for him?

He’s extremely gentle, although later we see some real moments when his blood gets up. He cares about art, and he immediately sees a value in what she does, immediately recognizes that she has talent, though her go-to is to pretend like she doesn’t. But this is not what she’s recognized for in her life. It’s not what she’s been sort of acculturated to be recognized for. He also is in the middle of an identity crisis, clearly. At the core of their obsessive love, and I’m always suspicious of obsessive love like this, they both feel known by each other, and that’s a feeling that’s different and unique for them. Neither one of them is going through their lives feeling known.