The Singing Fire

Susan Merskey is freelance writer in London, Ontario.

The Singing Fire is set in 19th-century London, England—a world of
smokestacks belching coal dust and laneways boiling with the steam from
kettles of laundry. This is where Nehama arrives with her dreams of
independence, not realizing the dangers facing a young girl on her own.
Tricked into prostitution, she escapes into the alleys of the East
End—where bustling market stalls and penny seats at the theatre are
just a stone’s throw from the criminal warrens—and makes a new life
for herself in the Jewish ghetto. Remembering the lessons learned on the
streets, she helps Emilia, another runaway, who is pregnant and
unmarried. But Emilia refuses the hardship of this life, relinquishes
her daughter to Nehama, and creates a new life for herself in the
streets of the West End. The stories of these two women intertwine as
they build their lives in two sides of the city.

This is Nattel’s second novel revolving around life in now-vanished
Jewish milieus. A Toronto Star reviewer said of her first novel, The
River Midnight: “Nattel has the gift not only of telling the truth
about women’s lives, but the rarer gift of creating a world the reader
can live inside ... She re-creates the radiant and magical Yiddish world
glimpsed in the paintings of Marc Chagall.” The same comments apply
equally to The Singing Fire, with its vivid evocation of the hard-living
conditions of London’s East End.