Where did the unusual story line come from?
The Youngest Bride is a novel based on facts from my own family history. I grew up hearing the story of my great-great-grandmother who was married as a little girl to a boy not much older than herself, in order to save him from the Russian army, as married men and boys were exempt from becoming Cantonist soldiers. According to family legend, my little ancestor fell asleep in her father’s arms under the chuppah, thus missing her entire wedding. The next day when a little cap was put on her head since she was now married, she took it off and made mud-pies in it! In one version of the story, my little ancestor was only five years old at the time of her wedding. In another version, she was eight. For the purposes of my novel, I changed her age to twelve. But the ‘five-year-old’ version was too endearing to discard altogether so I included it as the story of another little girl. I was always fascinated by the story and wondered what was it like for my ancestor to grow up knowing that she wa
