So I Wrote it Myself.
As America commemorates the 250th anniversary of its independence, I’m delighted to announce that Kindle the Light of Liberty is now available on Amazon.
Like many readers who love early American novels, I grew up surrounded by familiar stories. We know the Pilgrims. We know the Puritans and the Quakers. We know Washington, Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson. Historical fiction has given us countless perspectives on the birth of our nation. But one question kept nagging at me:
Where were the Jews?
Not because we weren’t here—but because we so rarely appear in the founding narrative.
Historians have long documented the lives of America’s colonial Jewish communities. Adam Jortner’s A Promised Land: Jewish Patriots, the American Revolution, and the Birth of Religious Freedom, Oscar Reiss’s The Jew in Colonial America, and Laurens Schwartz’s Jews and the American Revolution: Haym Salomon and Others all remind us that Jewish families were very much part of the American story. They built businesses, raised children, prayed in their houses of worship, argued over politics, supported different sides of the conflict, and helped shaped an emerging nation. Yet when I looked for novels that placed Jewish families at the center of Revolutionary America, I found surprisingly few.
That absence became the beginning of Kindle the Light of Liberty.
Set in Philadelphia, the novel follows Jewish colonists wrestling with questions of identity, faith, and loyalty as their city transforms into the cradle of Revolution. The story unfolds not only in the streets and meeting houses, but around kitchen tables, inside shops, through letters, and clandestine conversations. Rose Wachsman and her family live alongside neighbors whose lives are equally shaped by uncertainty—including Betsy Ross—because history wasn’t experienced in isolated communities. It was shared.
And just as Jane Austen used drawing rooms and assemblies to critique a changing world, her sharp social commentary inspired me to view the American Revolution through the intimate, high-stakes lens of one Jewish household.
Yes, I said Jane Austen.
People often are surprised by my literary influences; Austen doesn’t seem to be a logical choice when contemplating a novel set in this era. At first glance, I understand that it does seem an unlikely pairing! But Austen understood something timeless about human nature: history provides the backdrop, yet stories endure because of the people who live through it. That’s her genius and the secret to her longevity. She mastered the art of the domestic canvas—showing how massive societal shifts echo through family dinner tables and neighborhood gossip.
Elizabeth Bennet taught generations of readers that first impressions can be wonderfully, painfully wrong. Her wit, compassion, and willingness to reexamine her assumptions helped inspire my own heroine, Rose Wachsman. And if readers catch a glimpse of Fitzwilliam Darcy in Mr. Hirsch—reserved, honorable, occasionally misunderstood—I will happily plead guilty! They may also recognize faint echoes of Caroline Bingley, Mr. Wickham, or even Lady Catherine de Bourgh. After all, every story needs its social climbers, charmers, and people whose polished exteriors conceal far less admirable motives.
That’s why Austen still captivates us more than two centuries after her birth. She reminds us that beneath every great historical event are ordinary people navigating pride, prejudice, family expectations, misunderstandings, and deeply human connections.
That’s the novel I wanted to read. And that’s the novel I wrote.
A Revolutionary story where the Jewish experience isn’t a footnote.
A love story grounded in history.
And a reminder that America’s founding was always more diverse, more interconnected, and more human than we sometimes imagine.
Sneak Peek: Read an Excerpt from Chapter Four:
Rose tallied the chandlery’s goods with a restless precision. She found her thoughts snagging on the great gamble taking place blocks away. Had the divided loyalties finally snapped the cord of their resolve?
For weeks, men dawdled at her father’s counter, stripped of their coats and their patience in equal measure. Women lingered after completing their purchases, feigning an interest in a particular scent or the quality of soap, but their voices were lowered and their eyes watchful as they spoke of those grave matters which now threatened the balance of their world. Her father maintained a most rigorous display of neutrality, attending to every wick and ledger with a public diligence intended to keep his doors unbarred—not merely for the sake of the coin, but for the quiet, folded messages that were expected to pass through his hands in the shadows of the shop.
The burden of such secrets required a mask of perfect indifference, a performance that was put to an immediate test by a most unexpected visitor. One afternoon, while the bells of Christ Church tolled noon, Mr. Hirsch entered the candle shop and found Rose and Hannah Ellicott passing the time of day.
He stood tall in the doorway, his dark coat impeccably cut, appearing remarkably untouched by the stifling heat that had caused the rest of the city to wilt. His hair, tied simply at the nape, lent him an austerity that suited his grave expression. Rose noted a sharp, discerning flare of his features—a movement so fleeting she might have imagined it had her own pulse not quickened in response. She had hoped the clean fragrance of the honeycomb and citrus peel would mask the heavy, acrid scent of the rendering kettles, but the sudden, rigid set of his jaw suggested her efforts had been in vain.
Steadying her breathing and smoothing her apron, Rose masked any flicker of concern. She cared little if a stray smudge of soot marked her cheek. Boiling berries and rendering raw comb was a messy business; it followed that it was an odorous one. The result, however—the sweet-smelling soaps and tapers born of that labor—softened the edges of their world.
Given his apparent state, Nathan Hirsch was plainly not a man given to softened edges.
Rose felt rather than saw the shift in Hannah beside her as her friend’s missive slipped swiftly into the folds of her apron. She curtailed any emotion that would give her away, although she noticed Mr. Hirsch’s eyes registered the exchange. The gentleman had not yet approached the pair. In fact, he had not greeted Rose in his usual way. The simple nod she was afforded possessed nothing of his accustomed formality. And it gave her pause.
“The mail has come early today?” he asked.
His tone was mild. Too mild for her liking. What game was he playing? Rose felt the ridge of the wax seal from within her apron’s pocket. Wax was meant to protect. It could just as easily betray. She could not trust him. The letter was bound for Savannah. If it failed to reach its destination, a family might be ruined—or worse.
“Just the butcher’s bill,” she said lightly. “Mistress Ellicott was good enough to drop it off, seeing that she had to collect her weekly order of tapers. It is a small kindness we extend to one another.”
“Yes,” Hannah quickly added. “It helps when one must tend one’s shop. Sometimes Mrs. Riley or even little Tommy comes to our aid—such a good boy, that one. Always willing to help carry our little packages or knick-knacks.”
Rose resisted the urge to reproach her friend. Mr. Hirsch’s mouth, she noticed, curved ever so faintly—not in amusement, but in something like…recognition.
“Ah,” he said softly. “How clever you are.”
His gaze lingered on Rose’s face with cool intensity, as if attempting to reconcile the woman before him with some private conclusion.
“I would encourage you,” he continued, “to be selective in choosing couriers for your… knick-knacks. You would not wish anything to fall into the wrong hands.”
Rose met his eyes steadily, though her pulse hammered against her ribs. It was a moment that required a most calculated diversion; she must lead his thoughts away from the missive he had observed—away from the dangerous reality of their schemes and into the safer, if more painful, territory of society’s parlors.
“I thank you, sir, for your concern. Pray tell me—how may I be of service?” she asked with the civil indifference of a tradesman’s daughter.
“Was there something amiss with your mother’s order,” Rose continued with practiced calm, “or perhaps you seek a gift for a young lady? For Miss Franks, perchance? I believe my cousin has a particular partiality for our lavender soaps.”
He hesitated. It was a silence of a most distressing duration, and one which frightened her more than a direct accusation would have.
“Be at ease, Miss Wachsman,” he said at last. “I have been commissioned to acquire an additional dozen of the bleached tapers, if you please.”
Though she found the request odd—she had, after all, filled his mother’s order only two days prior—Rose turned to retrieve the items at once, willing her hands not to tremble beneath his keen observation. Mr. Hirsch had not shifted from his place; his dark eyes, however, took in every detail. Every shelf and display was scrutinized. Nothing, it would appear, was too small for the gentleman’s attention. Rose set the wrapped candles upon the counter between them—a small barricade of paper and twine.
“You keep busy,” he said. “I suppose you have felt the effects of the recent blockade.
“Indeed, sir. We have felt it exceedingly,” replied Rose. “We pray that the strain does not prove too hard to bear—for ourselves and for our families.”
Mr. Hirsch nodded his understanding as he placed his payment beside the parcel Rose had presented.
Sterling! He paid in sterling.
The silver coins caught the light with a cold, indisputable authority which the paper Continental notes could never hope to mimic. Rose found her gaze anchored to them a second longer than propriety allowed, her mind racing to reconcile the gleam of the King’s metal with the man who stood so unruffled before her.
Something unreadable flickered across his face. “Is there anything… amiss?” he asked, repeating her words.
She searched his expression for accusation—or mockery—but found neither. “No, not at all, sir. I thank you for your custom.”
He inclined his head. “Then I wish you a good day, Miss Wachsman; Mistress Ellicott.”
Rose watched him make his way toward the door. The question of where his loyalties truly lay rose to her lips with such force she very nearly put it to him directly.
“Mr. Hirsch.”
He paused, his hand upon the latch. “Yes, Miss Wachsman?”
“If you would authorize me to do so, sir,” she said instead, “I shall adjust your mother’s weekly order. I would not wish to incommode your schedule.”
“I have every faith in your judgment, madam,” he replied.
The bell above the door gave a soft, indifferent chime as he departed. Rose could not help but roll her eyes at the formality of his parting salutation. Madam, indeed!
Beside her, Hannah exhaled. “He knows.”
Rose turned the letter slowly between her fingers, the parchment feeling suddenly like lead. “He suspects,” she corrected, though the distinction brought her little comfort. She could not know if she had truly diverted his scrutiny or merely confirmed it; she was not sure which might prove worse.
Nathan Hirsch moved easily between worlds that distrusted one another. He frequented the Franks’ salons—seemingly paying court to the daughter of the house—yet he stood in prayer beside her own father each Sabbath.
He spoke carefully—and watched everything.
She could not know which allegiance governed him. Rose suspected that his neutrality was not a choice of conscience, but a masterwork of convenience.
Slipping the provocative letter into the hidden compartment beneath the counter, Rose felt her pulse steady as wood and wax and ordinary commerce enfolded the message until it could be revealed. He might keep his elegant decorums and his careful speech! She cared not for them. Here, amidst the scent of rendered fat and cooling wax, there was no room for duplicity—only the hard, honest work of survival.
I hope you’ll join Rose, Mr. Hirsch, and the families of Colonial Philadelphia as they discover that liberty is kindled not only by famous speeches and battlefield victories, but by the quiet courage of ordinary people whose stories deserve to be remembered. Click here to be directed to Amazon.
Happy Birthday, America! Kol hakavod—well done—for the first 250 years! May God’s presence continue to abide among us, and may our country remain a beacon of freedom and justice for the world.
With love,
Mirta Ines Trupp~ Author 