Excerpt from The Family Orchard by Nomi Eve, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Esther sat up again and turned the pillow another time. But the linen on the underside wasn't cool yet and this made her fidget some more. She did not know what or how or how much he knew, but she knew that Yochanan knew something. And Esther wondered how this something fit into his prayers. He was a most prayerful man, her husband, from a long line of rabbis reaching all the way back to Rashi, the great eleventh-century commentator.

Shutting her eyes, Esther tried to sleep but she could not. She kept seeing images and having odd thoughts and memories. She felt filled with them. Her whole body dreaming, remembering, thinking. One image would not leave her alone. It was of Yochanan's father. She could not stop visualizing and thinking of Yochanan's father, a man whom she had never met but whose story fascinated her. Esther had a picture in her head of an old man sitting at a table in the House of Study. He was surrounded by many students and many books.

The image dissipated, leaving her alone with Yochanan in the almost-dark. Esther closed her eyes and listened to her husband breathing. Heavy and deep were his inhalations, and every couple of breaths a restless comma of a cough inserted itself into his repose. Sighing, Esther feared that he had caught cold in the rain. She rubbed her eyes and took a finger up to her right nipple, which was still tender. The baker had taken her nipples into his mouth and sucked them until she felt like screaming in pleasure but she hadn't screamed; instead she turned the yell inward as she had taught herself to do, inviting it into an inner cavern where voices were always echoing and the trick was never to try to contain them but just to let them joyously be. She moved her hand away from her breast and traveled it down in between her legs, but only for a second. Not for pleasure, but for the feeling of comfort and warmth. And then she curled over on her side and shut her eyes.

She pretended that every time Yochanan inhaled was the turning of a page and every time he exhaled was the ending of a chapter. In this way, she read the Talmud of their togetherness. It was a big book. A book that contained all that had already passed between them as well as all that would ever pass between them. Past and present and future all were written there. She read for a long time, so many shared stories, some intimate, some silly, others dark and uncomfortable, some so beloved that she almost cried from them.

The night passed heavily. No, thought Esther, Jerusalem is not a place for regular sleep. Only for a kind of restless burrowing inward that leaves a soul dreamily awake all day long. Yochanan slept deeply; his breath was a parchment of air that she read from for a long time. And then, as the sky lightened, Esther moved toward her husband and roused him gently. Yochanan wrapped his arms around her and nuzzled his lips into her forehead. She pressed her body into his, and together they slept, adding another page there.

Excerpted from The Family Orchard by Nomi Eve. Copyright© 2000 by Nomi Eve. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.