- Hi, this is Lea Woodford with Between the Lines,
and I'm in beautiful Las Vegas
with inspirational author Marsha Fine.
Marsha, oh my goodness.
Let's talk about your book.
- Thank you (chuckles), Lea.
- The book was really so timely for today.
What was your inspiration for writing the Hidden Ones?
- Hidden Ones came to me
because I really do try to teach tolerance wherever I go,
and this was a time period
where people were very intolerant of their friends
and neighbors, and some of that is happening today.
It's amazing how the past can show up in the future.
- You know, I thought we dealt with that stuff.
But it has come into this, it's come to the surface again.
- Yes.
- And I really really loved your book
because the message was so beautifully written,
and obviously, you're a gifted writer.
- Oh, thank you.
- But what was your inspiration for really writing the book?
- Well, I feel very connected to the Jewish people
because I am Jewish, and this is a segment of history
that most people don't know, not even Jewish people.
So my audience's everyone,
but it's about the Inquisition in Mexico,
which I didn't know about until I discovered all this
in doing research for another book.
And the fact that I live in Arizona
and this was happening right under where I live,
right under our feet,
I thought why don't we know about this?
It's a piece that's a forgotten part of Jewish
and Mexican history, and I felt compelled to share it
because I think that these Sephardic people
have a very strong message
to share in current time, as I mentioned tolerance.
- Well, tolerance but there seems to be a lot
of division in the world right now.
- Yes.
- And it doesn't seem to be getting better.
- No, there's a lot of fear of the other, of the stranger.
It goes back to biblical times.
So this is nothing new.
However, the time period
that I'm writing about which was the 1600s,
they were very threatened by these people who stayed
to themselves, they were highly educated,
they could read, which was not encouraged at
that time period by the church.
They did not want people to seek out answers for themselves.
They wanted them to go
to the higher authority within their churches.
And consequently, because of the Inquisition,
people were forced to be converted.
And sometimes a few times.
But in reality, they were called conversos,
and in their homes they continued to be Jewish,
whereas when they went outside, they were Catholic.
So they were leading duplicitous lives.
Now, I am very interested
in how they could lead with two different identities.
- It's so amazing.
- It is very amazing.
They had different names outside
of their house, different customs.
They needed to go to church.
They had to follow a different set of rules.
Once they were home, they could be themselves.
But they were always in danger of being caught.
It was a crime against the state
to not be following the church.
So they had to be very very careful.
And consequently, it was a time of secrecy and deceit.
It was a time of telling lies.
Teaching your children how to lie.
You had to lie yourself,
because if someone found out what was truly in your heart,
which was to worship one God,
then you were marked for murder.
They were auto-da-fes.
An auto-da-fe is an act of faith.
They would've had large spectacles
where they would burn people at the stake.
This happened all over South America,
let alone in Spain and Portugal
where the Inquisition started.
So the book starts in 1649 in the aftermath
of a three day spectacle called an auto-da-fe.
- Wow.
- Where, yes.
Well, they didn't say that people were being put to death.
They said they were being relaxed.
That's the word they used. - It kind of reminded me
a lot of Nazi Germany.
- Very much so, and one of the things that people don't know
is that when Hitler was in prison writing Mein Kampf,
he was studying the Inquisition.
So he took a lot of those ideas like the yellow star.
It was a yellow circle during the Middle Ages.
The fact that they kept all of these records.
The Germans were excellent at that.
So was the Inquisition.
You can go into the Inquisition archives now,
which is where I found my story
about a grandmother being arrested during the Inquisition.
You think about the innocence of a grandmother.
She was caught for what they called Judaizing.
So that meant that they caught her lighting candles
on Friday night, or perhaps covering a mirror
with a black cloth after somebody passed away.
Or cooking.
Jewish people observe the Sabbath,
particularly at that time period.
So they didn't cook on Friday.
Or Saturday.
They prepared some stews, some meals before.
But what the priests would do is they would go up
to the bell tower and see
where there wasn't smoke coming out from the houses,
and they knew that the people living
in there were Judaizing.
- What I really loved about this book,
well, first of all, I loved history.
It was one of my favorite topics,
but it's a reminder that history can repeat itself,
and sometimes that is not a good thing.
- No, absolutely not.
I have another book, Paper Children
that's about my family who
was trapped in Poland during World War II,
and I had almost 100 people murdered.
And I often think, especially when I was writing this book,
if they had known what happened before
that during the Inquisition,
maybe they would have left in time.
- Absolutely.
Now, what was the most difficult thing
about writing this book?
'Cause it's really emotional.
- Oh, my goodness.
It's very emotional.
I'm a very positive, upbeat person.
My first writings was a satirical series
about Scottsdale, and here all--
- I read that.
(laughing)
This was a complete departure.
- A complete departure.
I moved into historical fiction after satire,
because I felt I had a very potent message,
and one of those is tolerant,
but it was very hard to write about the Inquisition.
It's not something that is,
any reason for anybody to be proud of.
It was really horrific as it seems.
And I had to explore that
and I'm not used to going into dark places.
I'm one that doesn't watch any violence
in movies (chuckles).
- You know, know you personally,
I could see, did you go into dark places when you
were writing or researching this?
Because, it touched me emotionally.
I mean, but the underlying message is so important.
And I see parts of your story happening around us right now.
- Oh yes, and I have to do a lot
of meditative prayer to stay in a good space
because sometimes I had to just shut it all down,
because it is a very dark place.
And the reading and the amount
of research I had to do in order to write the book,
I was in that zone for a while.
But I felt compelled and divinely guided to tell the story
of this grandmother and her granddaughter
and how they survived.
Survival is everything,
'cause then you get to tell the story.
- Well, you just kinda took my next question.
(Marsha chuckles)
I loved the way that you wrote about the grandmother
and the granddaughter, and the relationships.
And you know, so many relationships,
mother-daughter, granddaughter,
they are not the way they should be.
And this book was so eloquent.
What are your hopes and your aspirations for this book?
What do you want people to take away from it?
- Well, what I would like people to take away
is that we are tolerance
and to be tolerant of one another
and other people's belief systems
and we can all get along and be peaceful together,
and share recipes and information
and books and all of those things.
What concerns me is so many people are shut down.
They're closed, and they're not open,
and I want to open people's minds.
The best vehicle for me of course
is to have people read the book,
but I'm looking for a wonderful Latina actor
who wants to make a movie.
There are so many women in Hollywood looking for roles,
particularly Latina women
have not had their time in the sun,
and this has some fabulous roles for some great actors.
- Absolutely.
Salma Hayek comes to mind for me, she would be a--
- Oh yes, and Rosario Dawson, America Ferrera.
I have a list.
Jessica Alba.
There are so, Eva Mendes.
There are, I decided to look up the top 10 Latino actors,
and so many of them have their own production company,
like Sofia Vergara just started her own production company.
- I love her.
- She's adorable.
- I just--
- And some of them have Sephardic background,
which they may not know about.
- Wow.
- Because I can tell from the names,
and some of them have done research already.
Like Lea Michele who was Glee,
her father's Sephardic,
but she knew nothing about his background,
because everybody was murdered
and so people don't want
to talk about the past when it's so sad.
- It's sad but again,
if we don't talk about it, then it happens again.
Marsha, what advice would you give to an aspiring writer?
- I think what I would say first,
particularly if they want
to write fiction is they have join a writers' group.
I did in the beginning.
It was actually quite brutal.
I have a Master's in English,
so I'm not illiterate,
but it was tough, and I stayed in writing groups,
and I'm also very big on editors.
I had three different editors for my book.
So I had two beta readers.
I had another friend who's an editor read it.
And I hired her.
I hired a line editor to go through for every little comma
that wasn't supposed to be there (chuckles),
and I also hired a content editor to make sure
that the story flowed and that there was anticipation.
How you end each chapter is what's
going to make the person reading it go to the next page.
- You know, that's what I liked about it.
It was a page turner.
And the characters just builds and builds and builds.
And you don't do that in nonfiction,
so when, and I was reading a bunch,
yours was the only fiction.
But yours was the biggest book,
and it was one of the hardest to put down.
But it was so relevant for what's going on.
- Yes, yes.
I was very aware when I
was writing it what was happening in contemporary time
in terms of immigration and hate and the things that are,
the camps that we are divided into,
everything is very tribal now.
So I really wanted to have that message.
I also used real people.
The inquisitor at the beginning
of the book is a real person.
And when I go out and speak and I have PowerPoint,
I show his picture and the audience just,
they almost boo him, you know? (chuckles)
So they were real people in the book too.
- Yeah, but you really showed the grit
of your heroines and I loved that.
- Mm-hmm.
I'm very much a supporter of women, as you know.
- Yes, yes. - You too.
- Yes.
Now, can you show our viewing audience your book
and tell them how they can get this amazing book.
- Well, anybody can get it online.
It's at every online bookstore available,
I also have a website, marciafine.com.
It's M-A-R-C-I-A-F-I-N-E dot com.
So it's available anywhere books are sold.
- Marsha, again, thank you so much for being on the show
and for writing such an amazing book.
- Oh, thank you Lea for having me.
You've done a wonderful job and I'm proud to know you.
- Oh, thank you very much.
- Thank you.
- This has been Lea Woodford, with Between the Lines.
Thanks for watching.