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In Search of Home

June 2, 2018 | By Margarita Montimore | Reply More

When I was four years old, my parents and I immigrated to the United States as Soviet Jewish refugees. I grew up speaking Russian and English, holding onto some traditions and values of the old world, while learning the customs the new. While my current married name might belie my roots, being an immigrant is a core part of who I am. It has influenced my writing in unexpected ways.

Here’s the thing: I don’t write stories that are steeped in my Russian Jewish background, nor have I written about the immigrant experience (at least, not yet). But I do write about characters who struggle with their identity, who are looking for a sense of belonging, because those are broader themes to which I can relate.

No matter how much I may look and sound like an American, I’m still originally from somewhere else. On one hand, this has enriched my personal cultural identity; on the other hand, when you’re uprooted from one place and replanted in another, it means you never fully belonging to either one.

There’s this fascinating Welsh word that has no true English counterpart: hiraeth. It’s been defined as nostalgia or homesickness, but its true meaning is more nuanced and complex. Hiraeth is more a longing for a place, person, or era, that never was or never can be. Growing up as an immigrant, straddling two nationalities, hiraeth is something I understand deeply and it’s ever-present in my fiction.

Hiraeth appears in different ways in my debut novel, Asleep from Day. The story follows a young woman named Astrid as she recovers from a car accident and tries to piece together the twenty-four hours prior to it, which she’s forgotten but which may have been the greatest day of her life.

At one point in the novel, Astrid is literally displaced from her home and needs to find a new place to live. But her greater sense of longing comes from her desire to recover memories from her lost day and, as the plot takes more unusual turns, to separate fantasy and from reality.

The dark and surreal aspects of my writing are a product of the stories I heard from my parents growing up, which emphasized family lore and personal storytelling over national history. Some of these tales were told to me directly, while others were shared at dinner parties with other Russian immigrants.

These gatherings were boisterous affairs, louder and boozier than your typical dinner party, often filled with impromptu songs (my parents had been professional musicians and were often coaxed into performing), and always filled with passionate personal accounts. Many were anecdotes about life back in the old country or experiences adjusting to life in America. But there were always moments when the conversation would veer into darker topics.

One moment my parents could have friends laughing, recounting the time my mother ran naked out of the house in the middle of a Ukrainian winter thinking there was an intruder in the house after my father shaved off his beard for the first time. But the next moment the mood could grow somber as my parents shared frightening stories of the actual home invasions we were victims of during our first years in America.

The parties were an emotional rollercoaster as guests went from laughing over a language barrier mishap to crying over a personal tragedy to joining a sing-a-long. It was weird. It was wonderful.

These stories I grew up with were funny and dark and unusual—sometimes, even difficult to believe. We’re talking family curses, ghosts, psychic dreams and other premonitions, out of body experiences, you name it. As a child, I believed all of these stories to be true.

As I get older, I’m not sure how much to take as fact, though I want to believe all of it and still have an appreciation for all things strange and surreal. And all of this colors my writing to various degrees.

My novel has moments of levity as well as bleakness. The story features unreliable narrators, strange dreams, and yes, even psychic predictions. I want my readers to believe the unbelievable as much as they question everything. And if that leaves you feeling off balance, welcome to my world.

My experience as an immigrant has been an ongoing balancing act. The past versus the present. Fantasy versus reality. Tradition versus progression. Conformity versus individuality.

And woven through all that, hiraeth. That inexplicable nostalgia. The longing for a home, a place to belong. The desire fulfill an ephemeral American Dream, to live up to the opportunity my parents bestowed upon me when they uprooted themselves and traveled thousands of miles to a new world.

Finding a home for me became easier when I realized it didn’t exist as a physical place. For me, home is being with people I love and home is story. When I am with my family and friends, I am home. When I am lost in a good book, I am home. When I face a blank page and fill it with words, when I continue this tradition of creating and sharing stories, whether real, imagined, or a bit of both, I am also home.

And when I share my stories, whether you’re comforted by the familiar or intrigued by the strange, think of it as me sharing a corner of my home with you. A home where everyone is welcome and everyone belongs.

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Margarita Montimore received a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. She worked for over a decade in publishing and social media before deciding to focus on the writing dream full-time. She has blogged for Marvel, Google, Quirk Books, and XOJane.com. When not writing, she freelances as a book coach and editor. She grew up in Brooklyn but currently lives in a different part of the Northeast with her husband and dog.

Margarita writes upmarket/literary fiction that tends to be left of center and flirt with multiple genres. While she loves all things dark, strange, and surreal, she’s also optimistic—verging on quixotic—and a pop culture geek, so her work tends to incorporate all those elements to varying degrees.

About Asleep from Day

Astrid can’t remember the best day of her life: yesterday.

A traumatic car accident erases Astrid’s memories of September 9th, the day she spent with an oddly charming stranger named Theo. Ever since, she’s been haunted by surreal dreams and an urgent sense that she’s forgotten something important.

One night, she gets a mysterious call from Oliver, who knows more about her than he should and claims he can help her remember. She accepts his help, even as she questions his motives and fights a strange attraction to him.

In order to find Theo and piece together that lost day in September, Astrid must navigate a maze of eccentric Boston nightlife, from the seedy corners of Chinatown to a drug-fueled Alice-in-Wonderland-themed party to a club where everyone dresses like the dead. In between headaches and nightmares, she struggles to differentiate between memory, fantasy, and reality, and starts to wonder if Theo really exists.

Eventually, she’ll need to choose between continuing her search for him or following her growing feelings for Oliver. Astrid might go to extreme lengths to find what she’s lost… or might lose even more in her pursuit to remember (like her sanity).

“Simply riveting from start to finish… a captivating, literary piece that winds a path somewhere between mystery, romance, and psychological thriller.” — D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

“A compelling and original take on the classic amnesia tale . . . The narrative bursts with detailed, vivid characters . . . The dialogue is expertly crafted.” – The BookLife Prize

“A mesmerizing, unusual novel that’s part dream sequence, part love story, and part mystery. I read it in one gulp, and Astrid stayed with me well after I turned the final page.” — Emily Colin, New York Times bestselling author of The Memory Thief