Since my novel, The Rebirth of Gershon Polokov, came out in April 2012, a number of people have asked, “Who in the world is Gershon Polokov?”  They also want to know where I get ideas for my books and stories.

The book cover gives a brief synopsis of the story, but doesn’t address where the subject matter came from to begin with.  So – here’s how Gershon Polokov was born.

I was very close to my maternal grandmother, Ida Schwartz, to whom the book is dedicated.  Her face was the first thing I saw as I struggled for life following a blood transfusion at birth. My face was the last thing she saw before she died in my arms when I was twenty-one.  We were tightly bonded. 

From the day I was born, my grandmother called me “Mommy” because I was named for her mother, Minnie Tomashow, who had died the year before.  Minnie was from the Ukraine.  She wasn’t an educated person, but, from what I’ve been told, she was smart and musically talented and gave everyone in the family – plus a boarder or two – a home under her roof in the Bronx. She was older than my great-grandfather, Jacob, by a few years and I understand he was a handful. 

The name “Gershon” came to me out of the blue.  The name “Polokov” is a deliberate misspelling of my first mother-in-law’s maiden name, Palokoff.  She and I were close until she died at the age of ninety-seven and I’m sure her spirit is also present in my story.

Two decades after my grandmother’s death, a client urged me to visit a psychic he had recently met with.  I told him I wasn’t interested in having anyone put suggestions in my head – that my imagination was already out of control.  I also didn’t want to hear anything negative.  My client persisted and I ended up seeing the psychic, who was from a long line of psychics in Georgia.  Her name was Samantha. 

My attitude going in was that my session would be pure entertainment and I would take every word with a grain of salt.  Then Samantha picked up my hand and the awe began.

“I see that you’re doing your artwork again,” she began.  I had bought a twenty-five pound block of clay the day before with the intention of sculpting after a twenty-five year hiatus.  I had not yet opened the package.

“Where do you see that?” I asked.  “Do I have clay on my fingers?”

“No,” she said.  “I can tell by the unusual conical shape of your fingertips.”

“Hmmm,” I said, taking a closer look and seeing only my uneven fingernails.

Next, she said, “You’re taking a writing course.  I see you at book signings.  You are going to be a published author.”

“I just started taking a fiction writing class,” I said.  “The instructor is a Flannery O’Connor award winner.”

“You, too, will be a renowned writer,” she said. “But not until you’re in your fifties.”

Good.  Something to look forward to.

“You’ve been married twice,” she said.  “The first one wasn’t really a marriage.  This one is, but your husband travels a lot.  In fact, he’s on the west coast right now.”

“Where?  Where are you seeing that?” I exclaimed, pulling back my hand and looking at it, front and back.

Samantha pulled out a deck of cards and distributed them on the coffee table.  Observing the cards, she said, “You’re going to have a daughter.”

Ah – I finally caught her in something I knew could not be true.

“I’m forty-three and my husband had a vasectomy in his twenties. Where is this daughter supposed to come from?” I asked.

“From you,” she said.  “I would’ve told you the same thing even if you were fifty-three.

Hmmm.

“Are you seeing the daughter I lost ten years ago?”

“No.”

“Am I going to have an affair?”

“No.”

“Am I going to adopt?”

“No.”

“Are you seeing one of my nieces?”

“One is scholarly; the other is wild?”

“Yes.”

“No.  This will be your own daughter.”

Yikes.  I had heard enough.  I was fascinated and a little deranged.  I was going to have a daughter?  In what lifetime? 

A few days later, I received a call from a man I had dated once in high school.  I hadn’t seen him in twenty-five years and he now lived in Baltimore.  He said, “I have to see you.  I have messages for you.  Will you please meet me at a restaurant in Atlanta?  No seafood.  Remember, I’m a former football jock.  Make it a steakhouse.”

I asked my husband if he minded if I saw this man and he said he was interested in what this guy had to say.  What messages could he possibly have for me after all these years.  And, messages from whom?

I met the man at a place called Bones and he did most of the talking.

“What messages have your brought?” I asked.

“First, I want you to buy – not borrow – The Celestine Prophesy,” he said.

“What is that, like New Age 101?” I asked.

“Yes, pretty much,” he said.

“Okay,” I said.  “What’s your next message?”

“If you don’t know it by now, there are no coincidences.”

“Okay,” I said.  I can buy that.  “What’s the third message?”

“You’re going to have a daughter.”

Clang!  Holy shit!  Was he in cahoots with the psychic?  What in the world was going on?

“Who told you that?” I asked.

My old friend only smiled cryptically.  I have seen him at class reunions since our strange meeting at Bones.  We never discussed  our dinner conversation again.  And, he always looked oddly unchanged.

At this point, I asked my husband, “What would you think if I showed up pregnant?”

He said, “I would think that not everything can be explained by science.”

From that day onward and for the next decade, I ran out for a pregnancy test every time I was late for a period – until I realized that ship had finally sailed.  Where was my daughter going to come from?

That’s when my grandmother presented herself to me in a dream.  She told me to be on the lookout for a man who looked like a male version of myself.  He would have an ethnically Irish name, but would not be Irish. She didn’t tell me what was supposed to happen with this man but it slowly dawned on me that maybe I actually was my grandmother’s mother and she wanted to be reborn to me. I mentioned this notion to my mother and she advised me to let it happen, if it was meant to be.

And, yes, I did meet such a man.  For those of you who are familiar with my short stories, he was the husband of the woman who owned the single wide in The Chairs. This proved to me that my grandmother’s message was true.  And, I understand his purpose now.  It was to plant a living seed in my mind for this book; a book that would allow me to give rebirth to my grandmother – my daughter.

So – who is Gershon Polokov? 

Simply, Gershon Polokov is a soulmate who appears, if only for a moment, in every lifetime to propagate spirit.  The Rebirth of Gershon Polokov, ultimately, is all about mutual recognition and how we find each other, over and over again – for better or for worse.