Neglected by her parents, 19-year-old Maya Nidal has grown up in a rambling old house in Berkeley with her grandparents. When her grandfather dies of cancer, Maya turns to drugs, alcohol and petty crime. Her one chance for survival is Nini, who helps her escape to a remote island off the coast of Chile. Here Maya tries to make sense of the past, unravels mysterious truths about life and about her family, and embarks on her greatest adventure: the journey into her own soul.

Neglected by her parents, 19-year-old Maya Nidal has grown up in a rambling old house in Berkeley with her grandparents. When her grandfather dies of cancer, Maya turns to drugs, alcohol and petty crime. Her one chance for survival is Nini, who helps her escape to a remote island off the coast of Chile. Here Maya tries to make sense of the past, unravels mysterious truths about life and about her family, and embarks on her greatest adventure: the journey into her own soul.

Neglected by her parents, 19-year old Maya Vidal grows up in a rambling old house in Berkeley with her grandparents. Her grandmother, Nidia, affectionately known as Nini, is a force of nature --- willful and outspoken, unconventionally wise with a mystical streak, and fiercely protective --- a woman whose formidable strength helped her build a new life after emigrating from Chile in 1973. Popo, Maya’s grandfather, is an African-American astronomer and professor --- a gentle man whose solid, comforting presence helps calm the turbulence of Maya’s adolescence.

When Popo dies of cancer, Maya goes completely off the rails. With her girlfriends --- together they are known as the vampires --- she turns to drugs, alcohol, and petty crime, a downward spiral that eventually bottoms out in Las Vegas. Lost in a dangerous underworld, she becomes caught in the crosshairs of warring forces --- a gang of assassins, the police, the FBI and Interpol. Her one chance for survival is Nini, who helps her escape to a remote island off the coast of Chile. Here Maya tries to make sense of the past, unravels mysterious truths about life and her family, and embarks on her greatest adventure: the journey into her own soul.

A lonely man’s desire for a wife is the catalyst for the creation of a golem like no other. When she’s left master-less on the streets of New York City, she fights her ingrained impulse to help and protect those around her. A jinni, captured and enslaved hundreds of years ago, is free of his flask but not truly free as the iron cuff that keeps him in human form remains on his wrist. The golem and the jinni are drawn to each other, kindred spirits of long-forgotten fairy tales.

A lonely man’s desire for a wife is the catalyst for the creation of a golem like no other. When she’s left master-less on the streets of New York City, she fights her ingrained impulse to help and protect those around her. A jinni, captured and enslaved hundreds of years ago, is free of his flask but not truly free as the iron cuff that keeps him in human form remains on his wrist. The golem and the jinni are drawn to each other, kindred spirits of long-forgotten fairy tales.

An immigrant tale that combines elements of Jewish and Arab folk mythology, Helene Wecker’s sparkling debut novel tells the story of two supernatural creatures who arrive separately in New York in 1899. The woman is a golem created out of clay in Poland by an aged dabbler in the dark Kabbalistic arts to be the wife of a man who then dies at sea, leaving her unmoored and adrift as the ship comes into New York harbor; the man is a jinni, a being of fire, who is trapped by a Bedouin wizard in a copper flask and released accidentally by a Syrian tinsmith in lower Manhattan.

The narrative traces their respective journeys, as they explore the strange human city. Chava, as a kindly old rabbi names her, is beset by human desires and wishes, which she can feel tugging at her; Ahmad, baptized by the tinsmith who makes him his apprentice, is aggravated by human dullness. But they both work to make at least a temporary place for themselves in this new world, and develop tentative relationships with the people in their neighborhoods.

In an exciting and fast-paced narrative of adventure and adversity, the golem and the jinni finally meet: it is not exactly a romance, and at first they are hostile and suspicious, but they end up forming a strong bond, since only they can recognize each other for what they truly are. Surrounding them, and crucial to their story, is a colorful cast of supporting characters: the café owner Maryam Faddoul; the solitary Ice Cream Saleh; Rabbi Meyer’s beleaguered nephew Michael whose Sheltering House receives newly arrived Jewish immigrants; the young Fifth Avenue socialite Sophia Winston; and the mysterious Joseph Schall, aka Yehuda Schaalman, with his spells and esoteric wisdom.

A marvelous and compulsively readable work of fiction, THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI is a fresh combination of vivid historical novel and magical fable. With threads from Yiddish and Middle Eastern literature, it belongs in a tradition of contemporary Jewish writing that draws on folk and pop cultural materials, like Michael Chabon’s THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY, different though that book is.