I haven't checked the weather yet, but I know it is the perfect day to chat about adult Jewish literature. I'm Sheryl Stahl, thanks for joining me here at Nice Jewish Books. Today. It is my pleasure to be hosting Elyssa Friedland, author of Jackpot Summer, welcome Alyssa.
Hi, thanks for having me.
It is my pleasure. So can you tell me about your book?
Sure. Jackpot summer, which is my sixth novel, is about a family, the Jacobson family, who are from New Jersey, and they grew up with a home at the Jersey Shore on Long Beach Island. And when the book opens, all four Jacobson children are actually adults. They're adult siblings in different places in their lives and and they are gathered together with their father for the unveiling of their mother's gravestone she passed the year before. And when they're together, the father announces that he's going to sell their beloved Long Beach Island Home, which is devastating to the kids, the adult kids, I should say. And he asks for their help to pack up the house for over July 4 weekend, because he's going to sell it and he wants to move to Florida. So the family is all reunited in this treasured house full of memories and on a whim. Well, actually, I won't give it away, but there's a reason. One of the siblings, Noah, needs to leave the house. He says, you know, I'm going out. They see a story on TV, I'm going out to buy a Powerball ticket, and two of his siblings, his two sisters, say, hey, you know what count us in they throw a few bucks his way. But the oldest, Jacobson, Matthew, who's the most serious, most corporate of the bunch, he and his wife look at each other and think the lottery is for fools, and they opt out. Well, you can imagine exactly what happens the lottery ticket is a winner, and three of the four Jacobson siblings are overnight millionaires. And then the rest of the book follows first year of their lives and how the money changes them in totally unexpected ways, how winning the lottery is not at all what they expected, and it affects each of them differently. And then, of course, they have the looming question of, should they cut in their fourth sibling and their dad plays a big role? I think that's a pretty much sums up the book in a nutshell.
Yep, sounds about right. So clearly, a lack of money can be a huge problem. But the inverse, having lots of money doesn't necessarily make everything better, as the Jacobsons found out,
I definitely agree for sure, that having a lot of money is not a recipe for happiness. It can be great. It can it's not a guarantee that things will be great. I would add a particular wrinkle with the Jacobsons is that the money came overnight. It's not a question of, you know, an extremely rich person who, you know, worked their butt off for decades, and really, you know, over time, built up a huge amount of money. I still think it's complicated to have huge amount of money, but I think it's extra complicated, extra difficult, extra unnerving, and makes you feel uncertain and unworthy when it comes to you out of the blue and you don't feel like you earned it, you also don't get It gradually, so it's like, all of a sudden your bank account is flush. When you used to have to, you know, you know, you would never take a taxi. You take the subway everywhere, and then suddenly you're like, in a limousine. Yeah.
And all the siblings are in different economic states, so Matt, who's the corporate lawyer, is well-to-do not, you know, multi millionaire, the one who opted out of the lottery, and he has indeed been working his butt off for it, for the money, along with his wife. And his wife had grown up really poor, and so it was really important to her to give her their son every opportunity that she didn't have when she was growing up. The Jacobsons, on the other hand, grew up, I guess working class, lower middle must be middle class, since they had a summer home, but their parents were frugal, but they had everything they needed and a lot of things that they wanted, but there didn't seem to be lots of money just to be thrown around, correct? You know, their parents spent wisely and budgeted and all that. So think that was kind of part of the. So when the siblings were thinking, should they cut the oldest one in they're like, well, he already has money, but it's still but as he said, he worked hard for that.
I think that they are, you know, for sure, they don't see him as needy. I think if he was someone that they saw didn't, you know, maybe he just wasn't there that evening, let's say theoretically, and he was someone who needed money. They would give. Have given it to him in a heartbeat. I think it's, you know, they don't hand over the money, you know, I don't want to give away what they end up deciding. But certainly, right away they, they don't, and they think, well, he's very comfortable. But they also, they really didn't like the way he treated them when, you know, he went to see them buying a lottery ticket, and he and his wife kind of scoffed and looked down, like as as if we would ever like even throw $1 away to buy a lottery ticket. I mean, that's such a foolish I mean, they say it's like a tax on, you know, stupid people like, that's some people say that about the lottery. And the siblings feel a little wounded. I think they feel like Matthew and his wife Beth, do look down on them. None of them are as successful as he is and Beth, you know, they don't have as much money they they just feel like they they just think Beth and Matthew Think they're in another class, you know. And so I would say that might even have played a larger role the dismissiveness of the lottery and the feeling that the siblings were being foolish to even bother to spend a few bucks on it and wait in line for a ticket that impacted them far more than even like the fact that knowing that Matthew has a perfectly good job.
So I think one other kind of underlying issue in the whole family well and with money, is that money can fix things that the lack of money ... the problems that a lack of money makes like, if you don't have money to pay the rent, that money can fix you paying the rent or the mortgage or buying food, but if that's not what the problem is, then money can't really fix it. And I think that's part of the struggle that all of them went through. And one of the issues is the lack of communication, I think, between among the siblings and between the siblings and those who have spouses and the kids and the Father and the Father and the kids and and it's a little ironic, because the kids had a group chat. So they were constantly chatting, but in a way, it was kind of superficial, so they didn't say the issues that they were, you know, that they were struggling with in their lives.
I think that's very true. I know since this book came out, so many groups of siblings have come out and told me that they have a group chat with their siblings, and that felt like it was really similar to what I wrote in the book. And they loved seeing that, but agreed that it's typically like light inside jokes and, you know, even sending around funny memes. And it's awesome in the sense that it's a very easy way for all the siblings, to stay connected frequently, in a way that if we didn't have group chats, like, it's not nearly the case that everyone would call each other as much, and people are spread out across the country. But you know, on the flip side, everyone agreed, like, that's not the place where you drop a major problem that you're having no real deep discussions happen on a group chat. And I think that's really what the house, the beach house, symbolized. Like they were all it was a small house, and they were all crammed in it together. And it's when you're together in a physical space that not only like, did the real conversations happen, but the real problems just become evident. Like it's much, much easier for a sibling to hide a problem in their career, a problem with their spouse on a group chat. But when you're you know, brushing up against them, brushing your teeth in a small house, and spending all day with them, you can't hide that something's wrong, and I think the beach house was really seminal to their closeness, because that type of thing won't ever happen on a group chat, and so you have to really make the time to be physically together.
Absolutely. Yeah, so I don't know if you want to kind of go through the siblings, or if that would be too spoilery.
I'm happy to talk about them, so I'll go in age order. So Matthew is the oldest. He's married to Beth, and they're corporate lawyers, and they have one son, and as you said before, because Beth grew up very poor, without he luxuries and the tennis teacher and the tutors and this and that, like she has, they have a very bright son, and she has, you know, sort of like you always want what you can't have. And she's like, I want to give this child every opportunity. I knew I was smart, but no one helped me get an internship. No one helped me, you know, develop my math skills, like, outside of their classroom, and she's, like, throwing everything at this child, except for a childhood. So she's, you know, getting him the fancy chess tutors and this and that. Meanwhile, you know, when she feels like she's made it in this world, she can keep up with the best of them, you know, in terms of her child. But in fact, like, he's really missing a childhood. And it's it becomes, seeing him, Austin at the beach house, it's more obvious that he's, you know, as he's doing his workbooks, and then there's, like, old sand toys all over and messy art projects from the Jacobsons when they were younger. You can really see the juxtaposition, and that's really drawn also from what I see a lot. I have three children, and I see and we live in New York City, and it's very rat race, and I definitely see, like, nine year olds going for extra math, like not tutoring, like enrichment, and that sort of intense helicopter parenting. I had wanted to write about that. And then the next sibling, really interesting is Laura. She's married. She's married to a dentist, to her college sweetheart and two daughters, and she's about to become an empty nester. And she's been a stay at home mom for her whole life. She was unable to develop a career, you know, and she because she had children so young, and she's she her marriage is really at a crossroads. I won't say more about that, but when the book opens like, you know, shortly after the book opens like her and her husband really reached like, a very dramatic moment, and then she wins the lottery. So here's this, like she's facing a major change in life, you know, really big issues with her husband, two children out of the house, first time empty nester and now a millionaire. And she definitely tries to use the money to help her relationships in different ways, with her daughters, with her husband, and, you know, it's certainly not that easy. And then I really enjoyed writing Sophie, the the other sister. She's a I'll explain why I loved writing her so she has a boyfriend, she's a an elementary school art teacher, and she wants to or she she believes that she is just an elementary school or teacher because she needs to pay the bills, but what she would really love to do is be a full time artist, like support herself, sell her art, and make enough money, you know, so that she doesn't have to do this teaching gig. Well, she certainly can do that when she wins the lottery. But as it turns out, it wasn't necessarily time that was the problem, and inspiration comes from places she didn't expect. And having all the time in the world and having a fancy place to paint doesn't necessarily mean that you're able to produce what you thought you could. And I think about that a lot, because as a writer, there is definitely an element of like, if I only had more time, if I only had more someone else to help take care of my children, if I only had a better office set up with another monitor? And this like, but you don't really need those things to write a book. And so for me, it was like, I really enjoyed writing that character. And then finally, the baby of the family, who's the baby by quite a number of years. So he's sort of like, somewhat apart from the other siblings, is Noah, and he's really an arrested development case. Mama boy, baby of the family could not leave Long Beach Island. Noah lives there all year round. Is absolutely devastated when his father says they're going to sell the house. And for a guy like Noah, winning the lottery was the strangest thing ever, because here's someone with no material wants. I mean, you give him, you know, a comfy couch and some friends to hang out with, and he's perfectly happy. He's got a heart of gold, and that he really runs into a problem that a lot of a lot of lottery winners run into, which is that people come out of the woodwork and ask you for money. And that's something as I was doing research for the book that I learned about, that people you get letters and emails and people confront you and they tell you you owe them money. Your grandma owed their grandma money and now it's payday or strangers coming to you with sob stories. And Noah's a young, innocent guy, and it's really hard for him to say no. He's good natured. He suspects that some of these things are scams. But how does he know? And he just he really spirals. Also, you know, he's also someone who the money, you know, he didn't quite realize, like he he stops working, and he also didn't quite realize how much his job meant to him. So, and I did want to share, I know this is going a little bit of a segue, but I wanted to share a really interesting piece that was in the New York Times, the this was a number of years ago, the Surgeon General. His name is, is it Vivek Murthy, I think the Surgeon General, they, they always pick, like, one issue that's going to be sort of the hallmark of their administration. And this doctor, the Surgeon General, picked loneliness. He wanted to end social isolation. He became Surgeon General after covid, and it was, you know, it made sense, like on the heels of covid, that he would want to focus on that, because certainly covid unmasked a lot of social isolation. So he writes this op ed in the New York Times, which starts by him talking about a patient that he was seeing when he was in practice. He was, you know, an internist, and he had this lovely patient, a man, middle aged, in good health, who had a factory job, lived in a housing complex, and was just a healthy guy, healthy, happy guy. And he returned to him, you know, for his checkup a year later, and he was he had depression, hypertension, diabetes, mental, mentally and physically, he was way worse than he had been in his physical the year before. And what had happened in the intervening year, he had won the lottery. Wow, he won the lottery. This is fascinating. It's amazing. Op Ed, he won the lottery, which meant he quit his job, so he didn't have purpose. When he got up in the morning, he didn't have his coworkers anymore. He left his apartment in a tight, compact housing complex, and he bought a beautiful house in a gated community where he couldn't see any of his neighbors because the property was so big, and lo and behold, he grew lonely, he grew depressed. And those, as we know how much emotional and the physical are tied those psychological problems led to health problems. And the guy, the lottery win was the worst thing to ever happen to him. And I thought that was so interesting. You know, in light of what I've was writing at the time,
Yeah, that's fascinating. Yeah, you did have some quotes in the book about lottery winners. Were those real quotes? They looked like they were newspapers about people who'd won the lottery and ending up, ended up bankrupt.
So the book, I start the book with some fictitious news articles about winners and what happened to them, and it's they're just combinations. I mean, there's so many articles about lottery winners, and so when I created fictitious ones, I grabbed bits and pieces from different articles that I read and I and I put them in. And then, of course, there's the, you know, the number of fake ones, but they are all based on real stories, and what's happened to people in real life who won the lottery. And then the last fictitious article is about the Jacobsons and their win, right?
Yeah, yeah. I want to get back to the Jacobsons and their father, who was a loving father, but took a little bit of a back, not a little bit, a lot a bit of a backseat, to his wife, who is the primary parent, and he thought that she was just the perfect parent, and he let her or forced her to do all the parenting, because in his mind, she was so good at it. So that was another relationship that needed to be kind of healed during this process. It's kind of aside from the lottery, but because of his decision to sell the house, and, you know, and the kids needed parental support. And he was like, I don't know how to do that. If only your mother was here. And, you know, I forget which one, one of the daughters said to him, you know, she wasn't perfect,
Yeah.
I think I know that's definitely I usually don't write about my own family because I write fiction to escape, but I can, I know that that dynamic definitely exists in my house, where my mom, first of all, it was a different time raising us definitely more traditional gender roles in parenting, but my mom has just had, like, a bigger personality, like she's louder, she speaks her mind easily and freely, and probably because of that, and she was more nurturing when we were little, like we always went to her with. Our problems, and I think that my dad didn't have confidence in himself like, I think he felt like she was just better at this, like she didn't seem to hesitate, she didn't seem to need his opinion or want his opinion. And my dad has always been like a quieter force in our lives and then, but I've been really touched and amazed by when I do connect with him like he has wonderful advice, you know, not all the time, but you know, he has given me great advice he sees more than I think he sees. And I think that with Sylvia Jacobson gone, Leo is like, he has never had to really, really parent, like any sort of issue that came up. If a child was fighting with their spouse, they would call their mom to vent, you know, or was debating a new job, they would call the mom. And now, you know, Leo is in his 70s, and no one's ever called him until now. And I think he's, he's insecure, and I think he's, he has never played this role. He misses his wife too. He's reeling from grief. And I think he, he it takes him a while to realize that he needs to step up. And I think those words from his daughter were super reassuring. Like, you don't have to be right. Like, first of all, we just want to know you're there. Like we want to know that you love us, which I don't think they ever doubted, but that you're also always there just to listen. But the best thing you can do is give us what you consider to be your best advice, but if it's wrong, it's wrong, it doesn't mean that we'll be mad at you afterwards, that we're going to hold you responsible, like we recognize all mom was doing was giving, you know, the best advice that she thought, you know, was going to be the best path, but like she was wrong too, but didn't stop her from trying again next time. And I think that he felt really free. First of all, it's always nice to feel needed, so just hearing the kids say, We really need you, I think was a good wake up call for him. He sees an opportunity. His wife was larger than life, big personality. He was quieter and like, if there's a silver lining of her being gone, it's like, now people are listening to him, like we all know people who have, like, quieter personalities, and they're overshadowed easily, and then when they get the chance to step into the spotlight, sometimes they have really interesting things to say. So Leo really does rise to the occasion, and I think he feels free, because he knows he doesn't have to be correct. You know that it's okay. One, it's okay to just listen. And two, it's okay to give advice, even if it's not necessarily, you know, the ultimate problem solver
on the theme of being there, but on the flip side. And again, if this is too spoilery, I'll take it out. But one of my favorite moments was when a few of their mother's friends from their congregation approached the kids and says, you know, your mom was always involved in this fundraiser. You know, it's so important to the congregation, we would love to have you involved. And the kids get together and say, Oh, $75,000 well, will we write check? We'll take care of it. And the women come back and say, we didn't want your check. We wanted you, you know, we wanted you to be there to honor your mother's work and her involvement.
Yeah, I think that it's not uncommon for people with money to be very generous, but often take the easy way out, which is to say, you know you you give money. You know you could be give a lot of money, but if you're not giving any of your blood, sweat and tears, you're not really making the sacrifice that others are making, and the more meaningful sacrifice, listen, there's like, I think there, I forget which rabbi said. There's like, hand, there's head Jews, heart Jews. And hand, heart, head, yes, so like head Jews are like, you know, maybe studying Torah. They are thinking about deep Jewish intellectual issues. There's Jews who, you know, feel Judaism in their heart, and they're very spiritual. And then there's hand Jews, and that's like Jews who support, you know, and they use money, and they're all important and they're all necessary. But I think for Sylvia, she the mother, like she was a heart Jew, like she poured her heart into everything she did for her synagogue and to really continue her legacy, it takes a lot more than writing a check.
Yeah, I thought that was a beautiful moment, disconcerting for them, but a beautiful realization,
but a good, a good wake up call.
Yeah, so you mentioned that you did research. Was there anything in your research that surprised you?
Hmm, yeah, well, I also I didn't realize, like, how much taxes take. I mean, I know that taxes are huge, but I had no idea like that, the advertised amount of when you hear on the news, there's a billion dollar Powerball, how much less that the winner takes home. And while it's still a vast sum that you give, first of all, like you cut that number in half if you take the lump sum, because you have the choice of taking a lump sum or getting an annuity for 29 years. And everyone basically chooses the lump sum which so then they discount it to present value. So that's already cutting the number advertised in half, if not more than half. And then the lottery tax is half, you know. So that's like half to taxes, then you have your state taxes, and so not that I would snooze at that. But you know, someone who wins a billion dollar, an advertised billion dollar, a billion dollar Powerball, might net like $200,000 I mean, sorry, $200 million which, of course, is a lot of money. But you know, if you win a billion dollar Powerball, and you're advertised that like that, they've advertised and then you're the winner on TV, I think everyone who's watching is like, Wow, that guy has a billion dollars. But in fact, he does not have anywhere close to a billion dollars. And those numbers matter more in this book with the jacobsons, because they don't win a billion, they win far less. And so the numbers of like in terms of cutting Matthew in and what they're going to do with their money, they're far, far wealthier than they were before, but they're not so wealthy that like they can just do whatever they want, whenever they want, for as long as they want, right? But people don't realize that because they hear how much they won. First of all, they don't necessarily, people don't always take into account. Oh, but there were other winners from other states, so they had to divide it, and then they took the lump sum, and then the Jacobsons had to divide it amongst the three of them, and they paid huge taxes. So just learning, like the mechanics of the lottery was interesting, and I had absolutely no idea. I mean, I'm certainly I'm no dummy, but if I saw on the news that someone won a billion dollar Powerball, I definitely thought they had a billion dollars after that and so, and I wanted to make sure I got those facts right. So it was like consulting with accountants and really running those numbers other research. It was just always fun to like research professions, or I have a dentist, I have the art teacher, and I like just dipping my toe and learning about jobs that aren't mine, and so I can, I wouldn't say I learned anything particularly surprising about those industries, but I just under those jobs, but I just learned more what it's like to have those professions, which, like, I don't know. It's just like, it's always nice to keep learning. And I definitely, I'm, I'm from New Jersey. I'm definitely a Jersey girl through and through. But I didn't know Long Beach Island that well, and so researching Long, Long Beach Island, spending time there, learning the restaurants, the roads, what the houses look like, what the community is like the different the nuances between the different areas that was really interesting, that was really fun.
It sounds like it just a funny aside. I'm in Long Beach, California, and every once in a while, when we're searching for a restaurant, something, I get things from Long Beach, New York coming up, and it's like, no, that's a little too far to go for dinner. So you're probably asked this all the time now, but what would you do if you won the lottery?
I would never win the lottery because I would never buy a ticket. I'm totally disinterested. I never, I've never bought a lottery ticket in my life, except for the one I bought on Long Beach Island so that I could take a picture with it for book promotion. I I think it's, I would say it's just not a good thing. I don't want that change in circumstances. I like my life, and I don't want to have a dramatic change. I don't want the stress of it, and so I would buy nothing, because I will never be a winner.
Okay, I was thinking about it quite a bit, and I also don't play. So it wouldn't happen, although I used to give to an office pool every once in a while, but one thing that the pandemic taught me is that I do not want to quit my job and not have any structure to my day.
So structure, routine, purpose, all very Right,
exactly, yeah, so I don't see me doing any... any lifestyle changes, maybe renovating the kitchen and doing a little more travel. But other than that, it would probably go into retirement, and my kids retire, future retirement,
I guess yes, it would be nice to maybe buy houses for my kids, but I would probably buy them on the street, same street as me, and then they would not want that. So that's kind of like Laura in the book. You know, she uses the money to keep her children close, but that's not always without problems.
So do you have any projects in the works that you'd like to talk about?
Nothing that I'm ready to share yet, other than I'm probably going to be starting to write a screenplay with a not based on any of my books, an original concept with one of my friends. And I am writing another novel, but I haven't completely decided what it's about yet, so I have to just it's not even keeping it under wraps. I don't know what it is.
So Okay, that's cool. Is there anything you would like to answer that I haven't thought to ask about?
No, I think, I guess you know I if anyone is listening and on social media, I love to connect with readers. So my Instagram is the best place to find me, which is just my name, Elyssa Friedland. And if anyone's in a book club, there's a very nice book club kit on my website for this book that has some extra material and questions, and it's worthwhile checking out.
Okay, great. And I was going to ask you about contact information. So your name is E, L, y, s, s, a, Friedland, F, R, I, E, D, l, a, n, d, yes.
So that's where you can find me, on Instagram, and my website is also elyssafreidland.com
Great. So if someone were to use your book as a call for action for tikkun olam, for repairing the world, what would it be?
I would say, to do something like visiting someone who's socially isolated, because at the end of the day, the book really emphasizes connections between people over material things. So if you can, if you read the book and you're inspired to do tikkun olam, I would say a good place to start would be calling someone you know is lonely and checking in on them, visiting them, thinking about the people you might pass every day and you never take the time to think, Well, I see them a lot, but are they? But are they lonely? And just think about the people around you more deeply. So reach out to the ones you know are lonely, and just take a better look at the people you see every day, and take the time to consider whether they might actually be more lonely than you realize.
That's wonderful. Thank you for sharing that, and thank you Elyssa Friedland for speaking with me about Jackpot Summer.
Thank you so much. Thank you, Sheryl. I appreciate you having me.
It's been my pleasure!
If you are interested in any of the books we discussed today, you can find them at your favorite board and brick or online bookstore or at your local library, thanks to diyanki for use of his Freilich, which definitely makes me happy. This podcast is a project of the Association of Jewish libraries, and you can find more about it at www.jewishlibraries.org/niceJewishbooks. I would like to thank AJL and my podcast mentor, Heidi Rabinowitz, Keep listening for the promo for her latest episode.
Hey, this is Chris Farron, member of the Facebook group for the love of middle grade. We'll be joining you soon on the Book of Life podcast.
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