Cambria Gordon’s family sabbatical in Madrid in 2016-2017 became more than a time away from her native Los Angeles; Gordon felt her identity as a writer and as a Jew with both Ashkenazi and Sephardi influences expand. She launched into a journey of research and inquiry that led to the writing and publication of her new book, The Poetry of Secrets (Scholastic, February 2021).
The Poetry of Secrets is a fictional dive into 1481’s Madrid, during the time of the Spanish Inquisition and before the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492. The book’s 16-year-old heroine, Isabel, a poet and seeker of romance, is independent and artistic in a society that doesn’t support divergence from its young women. Issues of faith and class are central to the story, and at every turn lurks the danger of the Inquisition. Isabel and her family are New Christians, Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity, but who secretly maintained Jewish observances. Also known as
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Author Highlights the Horrors â and Hope â in the Spanish Inquisition in New Novel
Cambria Gordon (Photo by Arlo Gordon)
For Gil Troy’s review of “The Poetry of Secrets,” click here.
In 2016, author Cambria Gordon, her husband and their youngest child left Los Angeles to take a yearlong sabbatical in Madrid. She fell in love with Spain and became fascinated with the history of the Jewish people there, traveling to the old communities where they used to live like Toledo and Segovia and going to synagogue with Ashkenazi transplants who had moved there. Though Gordon is Ashkenazi, her stepfather was Sephardic so sheâs familiar with the traditions.