What was the inspiration behind This Rebel Heart?

This Rebel Heart came to me in pieces, like a lot of my book ideas do. It took a long time of marinating. I knew I wanted to write about a pivotal time in Eastern European history, and I knew I wanted to write something that felt like an organic, bottom-up movement. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was such a moment. And Csilla came to me quickly—I knew I wanted to write a young woman who was trying to stay safe, but also trying to do what was right. And that those two feelings were in conflict with one another.

Your writing is so lush and beautiful—what was the drafting and revising process like? 

Tedious, haha! I’m a reviser. I write many drafts and throw away many drafts, and the first draft of This Rebel Heart is almost unrecognizable from the final draft, except for Csilla’s name and her parents’ names, and the setting. Some parts came quickly and easily—I always knew the ending, and the way I wrote the ending didn’t change draft to draft—but other parts took a lot of finessing. Writing a book feels a lot like playing Jenga. You’re sliding pieces in and out and hoping nothing falls down in the process. And on top of that, you’re trying to make it feel beautiful. 

Without giving too much away, what were some of your favorite scenes and/or lines of dialogue to write in This Rebel Heart? What was the most challenging?

I think all my favorite scenes are spoilers, but let’s give this a go. I love the scene where Csilla and Tamás first meet and they dance together. I also loved writing a lot of Zsu’s dialogue. There’s a moment at the end where Csilla says goodbye to someone that is also one of my favorite moments, and probably the only moment where I really teared up. During the book, there are a few lines of dialogue said over the radio that are historically true lines, actually said during the Revolution. It was important to me to include those. In terms of the most challenging, I would say there’s a really tense scene between Csilla and her mentor-figure Márton Szendrey where she tells him that not everyone suffered equally during the war. That was a tough scene to write, and to balance out exactly what I meant by that, that many people suffered but the victims of the Holocaust experienced trauma and loss on an entirely different scale, and “war was bad for everyone” can be really dismissive. War is bad for everyone, but it’s also disproportionately worse for marginalized people, even when there isn’t a genocide. We see that even today. It’s important to acknowledge that.

The river that runs through Budapest feels like a fully fleshed out character unto itself and is a huge part of the narrative—how did you know that you wanted to incorporate magical realism into the book?

This Rebel Heart is fantasy or fabulism, which means it plays with folklore at its heart, versus magical realism which is a specific literary tradition to Latin America. But from the beginning, I knew that the river played a huge role. It’s hard not to think about it. When I visited Budapest in 2018, the river feels like a character in the city. It’s hard not to be drawn to it. I vividly remember walking across the bridges and the way that the river glittered in the sun, and how enthralling it was. In a way, I think of the river as a narrator in the book as well. I think in general, it’s hard for me to write straight historical fiction without a magical or fantastical element to it. I get a few pages in and think but what if and then the fantasy loving side of my brain takes over. I wanted these fantastical elements to feel lighter, less controllable, less known, and more intrinsic than the type I used in the Balloonmakers series. I wanted the fantastical to feel like a conversation with the political elements of the book, and with Csilla’s internal world. 

There are a number of queer characters and relationships in This Rebel Heart. Why was it important to depict LGBTQ+ identities in a historical fiction setting? 

Queer people existed in history too! Queer identities, including fluid identities, aren’t new or particularly modern. I think it’s important to include queer identities in historical fiction because it’s authentic. Where I deviate from history is that my characters tend to find refuges where homophobia and transphobia cannot touch them. While there’s some homophobia discussed in This Rebel Heart, the main characters find safety and comfort and love with each other. 

Readers will really feel immersed in the story through the geography of the city and the day-to-day lives of Csilla, Azriel, and Tamás. The amount of research required must have been exorbitant—what was the most interesting thing you learned?

I love doing research, and I really loved doing research for this book. It’s the second time I’ve been able to travel to research a book and I went to Budapest with my dad in 2018. I wrote most of the proposal for this book on the plane, and I wrote in cafes in Budapest, trying to capture the feeling of the city. My dad and I walked the path that the students took from the Technical Institute to bem Tér to Parliament and it was a really awe-inspiring trip. One of the most interesting things I learned was that anti-tank mines at the time looked a little like dinner plates when flipped upside down, so Hungarians used this—putting plates on the street—to herd tanks down streets that were harder to navigate, and where tanks were more vulnerable to Molotov cocktails. It was one of those simple, but genius, moves that helped turn the tide. With a book like this though, some of the most interesting things are also the most devastating. I remain in absolute awe of the bravery and courage it took for Hungarians to rise up against the Soviets, and to push the Soviets out of their country. 

Truth, lies, choice, and fear are a few big themes in this book. What is the main thing you want readers to take away from This Rebel Heart?

We do not always know the outcome of our efforts in fighting for truth and justice and a better world. We may not even see the fruits of our efforts in our lifetime. Despite this, it is always, always, always worth the fight. And there are so many different ways to fight. I think it’s clear in the book that there are people who fight the good fight in whatever ways they are capable—not everyone can take up arms, but someone can help refugees, someone can give others the keys to the printers and teach them how to print their own newspaper, someone can give up their beloved plate collection to be mock anti-tank mines. 

What does it mean for you to be sharing Jewish history and folklore at a time when antisemitism is a very real issue Jews are facing today?

Everything, to be honest. I’ve been thinking a lot about when I realized that Csilla was a Holocaust survivor. I knew the book was set in 1956, obviously, and I knew she was 18, and when I did the math and realized that she was born just before the war began, and that she was a Holocaust survivor, it radically changed how I interacted with Csilla as a character. There’s so little written about those who survived, those who stayed in Europe, those who had to continue living amongst their neighbors, some of whom were participating in genocide against them and their families. I wanted to explore that more. And I wanted to show the challenge that I think many marginalized people feel: the desire to fight for a country that would not fight for you. That’s something that frequently still feels real here in the United States, and definitely felt real in Europe. 

Which books do you think This Rebel Heart is in conversation with? And do you have any recommendations for recently published or forthcoming YA books?

I think This Rebel Heart is in conversation with a lot of wonderful books! I particularly love the pairing with Rebecca Podos’s From Dust, a Flame because Becca’s book feels like the contemporary version of This Rebel Heart in quite a few ways. I am also excited for Sofiya Pasternack’s Black Bird, Blue Road, which is coming out September 2022. 

As a prolific author who has written across age categories, formats, and genres, do you have any advice for young writers? 

Keep writing! Learn to finish things. Don’t compare your first drafts to the finished products you see on the shelf (I have to remind myself of this one all the time!) And don’t be afraid to be a little derivative as you’re learning to write. I learned to write and improve my writing by writing a lot of fanfiction. Working in familiar worlds that someone else had done a lot of the work on let me practice until I was good enough to make up my own worlds.