NEWCOMERS IN AN ANCIENT LAND

In her debut memoir, Wagner recounts finding her identity in a country that was doing the same.

Israel has changed a lot since the early 1960s, when Wagner saw it for the first time. “But back then, Israel and I were in many ways coming of age like a pair of adolescents….In that sense, the country’s cocky chutzpah and can-do attitude were a good match for my own mix of idealism and bravado.” She had gone to work on a kibbutz (a collective farm), founded by some friends of her parents, doing chores in the house and the fields alongside other international students. There she met a young French Jew named René, with whom she unexpectedly fell in love. Wagner had come to Israel for a number of reasons: to understand the Jewishness of her secular American father, whose religion and ancestry felt somewhat remote to her; to experience the alienation her own mother felt, as an Englishwoman who had moved with Wagner’s father to—and then all around—the United States; and to do something without her identical twin sister, Naomi, with whom she had always been intertwined. What Wagner found, however, was a strong connection to culture and place that would shape the rest of her life. The prose here paints a vivid portrait of rural Israeli life at the time, capturing the optimism of the place and of young adulthood in general. It’s a romantic portrayal of a country coming into its own, though as she looks back from the vantage point of history, Wagner tempers some of her earlier exuberance, as when she discusses her admiration of young Israeli soldiers: “I couldn’t help feeling a kindred spirit with these rosy-cheeked recruits tasked with the country’s defense. In those days, it never occurred to me how a Palestinian might feel on the wrong end of their firepower.” Part travel memoir, part family saga, part coming-of-age tale, Wagner’s book records a milieu that is simultaneously simple and complex. Though hardly a page-turner, the memoir gives a sympathetic outsider’s view of the kibbutz movement and the early days of Israeli nationhood.

A sometimes-affecting, intriguing reminiscence of growth and young love in the hills of northern Israel.