Neshama is more than a book about a girl who sees ghosts—it’s a lyrical meditation on identity, intergenerational trauma, and the courage to stay true to your soul. In this moving conversation, acclaimed author and educator Marcella Pixley reflects on the origins of her novel-in-verse, the inner world of her spiky protagonist Anna, and why young readers deserve stories that validate complexity and bravery. We dive deep into inherited wounds, ancestral strength, Jewish identity, forgiveness without erasure, and how middle-grade literature can make even the hardest truths palatable. Marcella also reads some of her stunning poetry—and shares what’s next.
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Marcella Pixley – Author Of Neshama
Marcela Pixley is the Author of four acclaimed books for children that all explore complex family dynamics and mental health issues.
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Marcy, thank you so much for joining us. It’s delightful to see you again.
Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
Unveiling “Neshama”: A Story Of Brave Authenticity
I’m excited to talk about this new book, the Neshama book. I was thrilled to finish it and started talking about it on my internet show and two different people said, “I love that book.”
That’s so wonderful. Thank you.
This is at least maybe three of your books I’ve read now. One of them was Trowbridge Road and now this one. Enlighten us. Why are you pouring all of this mind, energy and intelligence into books like this? What do you want us to be taking from it?
Nashama is a book about a girl who has a very unique talent, which is the ability to talk to ghosts of her ancestors. This comes with a lot of different challenges for her in her life. One being that nobody believes her. Nobody believes that she’s doing that. She has to make a decision about whether to keep on following her gifts, even though her gifts aren’t recognized by anybody except for her. Her grandmother thinks it’s her poetic spirit, but she’s bullied at school. She is making her parents and her teachers very worried.
It’s a book about making a decision about whether to follow your best self, your passionate self or whether to conform so that you fit what society expects of you. Which is something that we all deal with, especially kids who are Anna’s age. I am trying to write books about people who are making the decision about whether or not to live their life bravely and authentically. I think that’s what Neshama is about. I feel like that is crucial for young readers especially to have books in the world that give them permission to be completely themselves whatever that may be.
The Art Of Character: Embracing Spiky Souls
That’s clearly a theme from the Trowbridge Road to this book. This idea of living bravely. The delight as I mentioned when I talked about this from your writing is your character development and this, what I would consider a wisdom about our lives and our relationships. While there are a lot of us that don’t fit the cookie cutter mold through high school and grade school. You write about it so poignantly. There are times in the reading where I just put the book down and take a breath and call myself down because it stirs up stuff of the awkwardness of those years and for my awareness of how basically unhealthy our culture is in trying to round off the edges or stomp out any dissimilarities.
I’ve been an eight-grade teacher for many years now or a little bit more probably. I am drawn to the spiky students like I’m drawn to the kids who are not what society expects or sometimes the doors. My goal as a teacher, as a professional is to make my space into a space where those people can be entirely who they are. The parts of us that aren’t rounded out as you say are the most beautiful parts of humanity. These are parts of people that make this world, which is such a broken place into a place that’s worth living. It’s those differences that make us gorgeous. I agree with you entirely.
As you gave the intro, you said that Neshama is able to talk with the ghosts of her ancestors but as I read it, ghosts talk to her. They don’t have to be her ancestors.
You’re right. She has the ability to call to her any ghost that happens to be in the space where she is. I try to give an idea of different kinds of ghosts that exist in this book. There are ghosts that come from the spaces that she inhabits. There are ghosts that come from her family’s past. She is even able to eventually communicate with the ghosts of her tormentors and that helps her to understand where her tormentors are coming from and why they behave the way that they do. I’m sitting in the house where the book takes place, which is a summer house in Gloucester that I’ve been lucky to be able to be in since childhood. We’ve always imagined that there are ghosts here. That was one of the inspirations for this book.
Ancestral Whispers: Understanding The Ghosts Of “Neshama”
As I mentioned to people whether I’m reading Ursula K. Le Guin or I’m reading your books, I’m always drawn to people who can talk about life and relationships intelligently or accurately. There’s a series of insights woven through the stories like there’s meat on the bones so to speak. It’s not just an empty little story. In this particular book, I love the idea of staying close to who you are as a person, as a personality, what your values and morals are even when people want to encourage you to go in a different direction, or it seems like it might be easier to go in a different direction.
Especially when because what would the world be if we didn’t have people who knew how to do that.
A bigger mess. A different creative chaos. Have you launched a big promotion tour for the book?
The unrounded parts of us are humanity's most beautiful parts. These are the parts of people that make this broken world a place worth living. Share on XI have. It’s just starting to trickle out. The book came out on May 13th or 15th. I’ve done a lot of readings at libraries, bookstores and at my school. There’s some more coming this September 2025. The book came out right as school was ending, so I would say we stopped for the students. Students are out on summer break now but we’ll pick up again in the fall.
“Neshama”‘s Reach: A Book For All Ages
What age range are you targeting with this book?
The book is middle grade. The sweet spot for middle grade is ages 9 through 14. That’s a large range, but what’s wonderful about middle grade literature is that it is widely read by young adults as well. I think this book is going to be poignant for adults, too.
Healing Generational Scars: Forgiveness and Freedom
It certainly was for me, as I mentioned. I do a lot of work with people when they’re trying to manage their rents tight, angry, fearful when I categorize these negative emotions. What we discover most often is that the patterns for that and the way to interpret the world and respond to the world that give rise to those negative emotional states were downloaded in the grade school and middle school years. A lot of people realize they’re not an adult living their life. They’re an angry tween or scared eighth grader that’s making their life decisions now.
We carry those scars with us and I think that we also carry the scars of generations before us. The idea of ghosts and making a decision about whether you hold on to those ghosts or set them free is something that is psychologically important for all of us. That’s part of what Anna is grappling with in Neshama. When this one particular ghost Ruthie, who’s a family member. I won’t give too much of it away.
Is it like an aunt or something?
Yes, asks permission to inhabit Anna to take care of some unfinished business to confront her own tormentor. Anna yearns to help heal the wounds of her family through helping Ruthie, but it becomes a burden that she needs to make a decision about whether it’s healthy for her to carry. She has to learn how to make her own way and heal some of those wounds and maybe let Ruthie go in the end.
I see this being a book that has to do with trauma and how people need bravery to come to peace so that they can make and forge their own path. I think it’s a book about forgiveness but I see forgiveness as not meaning that you have to think that the people who have wounded you is not saying that those things are okay or aren’t horrible and didn’t harm you, but somehow facing them for giving yourself and allowing them in some way to not hold you back. The ghosts are literally the manifestations of things that have happened that need to be forgiven and let pass.
When you talk about that and you talk about the problems or the sins or the traumas of our ancestors get passed down to us. The good news is, so do all of the skills, creativity, perseverance, and strength. That’s one of the things that I got from both of the books of yours that I’ve read. It’s this willingness to say, “It isn’t all nice, clean and neat but there’s a lot of good stuff in here.”
One of the things that Ruthie gives to Anna in Neshama is that Ruthie has this wild bravery. She is fearless. During the time that Anna has Ruthie inhabiting her, she’s able to take some of that fearlessness also and that’s something that she had never experienced before. She has to learn to find her own bravery. That is not just the inherited bravery from Ruthie. Those difficult things that happen in our past are sometimes blessings for us as well.
The main character is Anna in Neshama?
Yes, and her grandmother calls her Shannon. She says that she is Shannon Neshama. That means in Yiddish that she has a beautiful soul. That’s why the title of the book is Neshama.
What she does as a person is this tenacious clinging to the truth that she knows this truth of her ability to see and communicate with souls, spirits, entities, ghosts or whatever you want to call it. It’s that incredible tenacity and refusal to give up what she knows to be true. That it’s got to be one of those cross-generational strengths that she has inherited and how you write it in the book that she uses it to eventually. I’ll just say the word help. Somebody who wasn’t so kind to her. Instead of being pulled out of my true nature as this gentle loving soul by the bullies who keep abusing me and pretty soon, I want to abuse them. Instead of that, I hold on to my gentle loving self and extend that in the relationship with the bullies, eventually.
That is one of Anna’s strengths. She is able to empathize with the reasons why the people who are cruel are being that way and that happens a number of times in the book. It happens probably most powerfully with this neighborhood Jeremy, who lives down the hill in her grandmother’s neighborhood in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
Jeremy is a character who behaved with antisemitism towards her family and towards her aunt. Her grandmother hates him for it. You can understand despising cruelty that has harmed you and harmed your family. That makes a lot of sense. Anybody who feels that anger towards people who have harmed them, then you can understand why that might be. What’s more difficult and what is something that Anna is able to do is to understand the pain that another person might be going through that might cause them to behave in a harmful way.
The idea of ghosts, and making a decision about whether you hold on to them or set them free, is psychologically important for all of us. Share on XFor some reason, Anna is able to see all of who Jeremy is, which includes his own abuse as a child, his own neglect as a child, his own fascination with these Jewish neighbors that he has and his desire to connect with them but not knowing how. Her ability to see that in Jeremy becomes one of the ways that she heals in her family, something that was very painful for them.
Another time that Anna does this is with the character Eden who is her bully at school and because Anna is able to see ghosts, she is able to understand that Eden’s bullying of Anna comes from Eden’s traumas. What wonderful world would this be if we were able to understand that when people are hurting and carrying wounds, they behave in ways towards each other that are harmful. If we’re able to look at each other’s behavior through empathy then we can start to understand why people do what they do.
There’s a quote and I forget which author but the quote about, “If we could but see the hidden pain of our enemies, it would be enough to dismantle all hostilities.”
Now more than ever it. How wonderful would it be if we could do that? There’s hundreds of places in the world where we need that understanding in order to find peace.
The strength to go ahead and do the next right thing even though it’s the hardest thing on the list of possibilities in front of me. I have to be willing to do what’s right even when it’s the toughest thing on the list. Certainly, turning that other cheek or that gentle smile to your bully when he or she is feeling down is not an easy thing to do.
No, it’s not. When somebody harms you, it’s very difficult to want to do something like that.
Empathy And Insight: The Power Of Seeing Others’ Pain
Why would anybody do something like that? What got into this young woman?
What is it about Anna that allows her to know that?
How do you do the hardest thing just because it’s the right thing? When so many other easier things are begging for your attention or even there are people pushing you.
It’s her ability to connect with the ghosts that allows her to know that we all have hurts that linger and pull at us. She walks through the world with the voices of these people who are missing their lives, have passed away and are still hurting that makes her yearn to create a world where that hurt can be let go. Could I read a poem about some of that? Would that be okay?
Absolutely. When you were saying that earlier, I thought what you’re saying is basically her being able to see the ghosts is a metaphor for her being able to see the Truth and not be dissuaded from it. Not be gaslit into thinking she’s not receiving accurately and because she can see the bigger picture truth, she holds on to that and acts in a way that’s in line with her values and priorities, rather than getting pulled out of her normal style, her own personality.
Connecting To Identity: Poems Of Jewish Heritage
She has a life where she feels very deeply connected to the spirits and the memories of everyone around her. I thought that maybe I could read some of the poems that have to do with connection. One of the themes of this book has to do with Anna’s connection with her Jewish identity. I mentioned before that in her family’s history, there’s this antisemitic incident that has broken her family open and has made wounds for her father in his grief and her grandmother and her grief and has made it so that Anna herself has been raised knowing that she’s Jewish, but not knowing anything about Judaism and not being able to feel the connection to Judaism that she desires.
She ends up going to her grandmother’s house in Gloucester, which is where I’m sitting now to celebrate Shabbat every Friday for a few different weekends. It’s there in that house that she’s able to finally learn about who she is and embrace her Jewishness in a way that she wasn’t able to because her family has turned away from it. I thought that I would read some of these poems about Anna’s Jewish identity because they help to illustrate a sense of connection with generations and with the people that came before her. I’ll read a few of those if that’s okay.
Please.
I also wanted to make sure that the audience who are watching this video know that Neshama is a novel in verse and so it’s written in poem form. Each of the chapters are short poems that move the story forward. “The Soup Pot. Bubbe lifts the lid and lets the steam rise into the kitchen. This battered soup pot dented from its journey from an apartment in Brooklyn to Bubbe’s old kitchen in Gloucester, Massachusetts where I stand transfixed watching the broth bubble. Bubbe gives me a sip. “When you taste my soup, close your eyes,” she says. Imagine my mama, her hair covered by a kerchief, stirring Shabbos with a wooden spoon, One generation sipping the broth of the one that came before.’”
Sometimes, difficult past experiences are blessings in disguise. Share on X“Blessing. Then she strikes the match, circles her hands above the flickering glow, and covers her eyes to whisper the Shabbos prayer, Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech Haolam. The real blessing is that the prayer has lasted so many years like the spiderweb of this white lace woven with a silk that is at once incredibly fragile and as strong as a story told over and over from a mother’s mouth to a daughter’s ear one generation after another.”
“Lined up behind her, I can see the endless thread of mothers and grandmothers. Each with a soft hand resting on the shoulder of the one that came before.” I’ll read one more. “Kiddush Cup. In the center of the table, there is a tarnished cup filled with wine. A promise that even if the story is sad, there is sweetness in the way. One generation takes a sip and then passes the cup to the next. Empty hands waiting so we may drink it to the dregs.”
I enjoyed the fact that it was written in verse. For me and whatever my brain processing style is, I was able to read it more quickly and smoothly. There were several that I would back up and read and reread to let the poetry sink in.
That was my hope. I’m glad that you had that experience because I want each of those poems, first of all, for them to be palatable on their own so that you can sit and savor one of them like suck on it. Suck on the meat of it for a little while but also, for the experience of the turning of pages to drive the story forward and for the space between each poem to be meaningful. Each poem describes a tiny moment. Some of them happened very close together. Some of the poems have to do with different details in a single moment. I wanted that experience of the reader to be able to move through what Anna was moving through or to stop and save her.
It seemed to work very well for the way that I picked it up and the way my brain was processing. I’m a little bit distracted. I keep thinking of, did you know about Andrea Gibson?
The Legacy Of Poets: Andrea Gibson And The Afterlife
I’m so glad you mentioned her because I was just listening to that beautiful poem that she wrote for her wife about death. It resonated with me for what Neshama is about. I was wishing that I had written it down so that I could read it on this show because it’s incredibly connected to what this book is about.
She preferred a different pronoun but they were very powerful, I’ll say magical in the way they could bring a sensation of life into the realm of letters, words and the spoken word pieces. I should mention that they passed away. Mentioning this is on the occasion of her dropping the body and yet, they have done a tremendous job over the years of helping us take a different perspective on what it is. The piece I’ve read most often is, “For the days I stopped wanting a body, what if the soul misses every ache and pain? Every little blister on the hand, every little splinter under a nail.” Poets like Andrea and David White and Rilke, have enriched my life and I thought I would mention her before we wrap up.
Thank you. Their poetry has been resonant for me and it couldn’t be more appropriate for the conversation we’re having. I just became aware of the poem about death that is everywhere, the day after their death. I don’t have the lines memorized in my mind because I’m just becoming acquainted with that poem but there’s one line that the idea is that you think that the person who’s passed away is so far away that you can’t see them.
They’ve never been closer.
The line is, “I’m so close that you look past me when you’re looking for me.” What a beautiful line. You don’t happen to have the poem right there, do you?
I’m trying to see if I can pick it up here real quick.
I have a poem that I feel like is almost an answer to that. That beautiful image of them reading that poem out loud to their beloved I think something that’s going to stay on this Earth for a long time. What a wonderful legacy to leave.
There are many wonderful pieces from their body of work like Love Letter from the Afterlife.
Would you read some of that?
They write, “My love, I was so wrong. Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before. I am more with you than I ever could have imagined. So close you look past me when wondering where I am. It’s okay. I know that to be human is to be farsighted. Yet feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living.”
“I can see the endless thread of mothers and grandmothers, each with a soft hand resting on the shoulder of the one that came before.” Share on X“Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive? Ask me the altitude of heaven, and I will answer, “How tall are you?” In my back pocket is a love note with every word you wish you’d said. At night I sit ecstatic at the loom weaving forgiveness into our worldly regrets. All day I listen to the radio of your memories. Yes, I know every secret you thought too dark to tell me, and love you more for everything you feared might make me love you less.”
“When you cry I guide your tears toward the garden of kisses I once planted on your cheek, so you know they are all perennials. Forgive me, for not being able to weep with you. One day you will understand. One day you will know why I read the poetry of your grief to those waiting to be born, and they are all the more excited. There is nothing I want for now that we are so close I open the curtain of your eyelids with my own smile every morning. I wish you could see the beauty your spirit is right now making of your pain, your deep seated fears playing musical chairs, laughing about how real they are not.”
“My love, I want to sing it through the rafters of your bones, Dying is the opposite of leaving. I want to echo it through the corridor of your temples, I am more with you than I ever was before. Do you understand? It was me who beckoned the stranger who caught you in her arms when you forgot not to order for two at the coffee shop. It was me who was up all night gathering sunflowers into your chest the last day you feared you would never again wake up feeling lighthearted. I know it’s hard to believe, but I promise it’s the truth. I promise one day you will say it too– I can’t believe I ever thought I could lose you.” Thanks for the indulgence.
I think that it is good to read that poem after their death but a gift that poem is to the world now.
Agreed.
Here’s some poems from Neshama that have to do and give similar messages that perhaps the people that we love don’t go away and are with us. Here’s some poems from Neshama that speak to that same idea. “Dance Macabre. Just because we have no legs, does not mean we have forgotten how to dance. If you look out the window, you might see us shimmering when new moonlight just after rain glances against the memories of our bodies. You might have thought we were spiderwebs, translucent as moths. The impossible silk of dandelion clocks, maybe then you would notice how fragile and how it is to be alive.”
“Ancestors. We hear you when you speak to us. We see you moving through rooms and generations. When you ask for a sign, we always give it even though sometimes it is just the wind through an open window, a flock of starlings startled from bare branches rising like leaves set free on the wind.” I think that I’ll stop there. I think that the wisdom comes in knowing how deeply we desire and yearn to remain connected to memory and the people who have passed on but also, the importance of forging our own paths and finding ways to remain connected but also to be free to live our life and to heal.
I should say that it brings to mind one of Guy Finley’s talks. He says, “I’ll give you a definition for wisdom. Wisdom is the gradual erosion of every little belief that you’re separate from anyone or anything.”
That’s where empathy comes from.
Awakening to the moment more fully and being so aware that we start to tune in to all of these other energies and ways we’re connected. The synchronicities that are always there for us to see but we can’t see them if more focused myopically in our anger or frustration. We can’t see how the whole of life is expanding in this wonderful creative way.
Still, despite all the brokenness. That’s crucial for us to remember.
There’s the line from the City of Angels movie, where the angel has to manage the doctor. “There’s a lot more going on here than about.” The doctor thinks, “This wasn’t supposed to happen.” The angel says, “Yes, but there’s a lot more going on here than you understand.” That is ever thus with us as long as we’re in the body. It’s so deep and rich that we can get caught up in it and believe it’s all there is. The message comes across through Neshama and through Andrea’s work that certainly not all there is to us.
The Enduring Power Of Middle Grade Literature
You can start early in understanding that. That’s the beauty of middle grade books. because they reach young readers in a way that starts to wake them up to things that are important. I love young adult literature and adult literature. There’s something very beautiful about middle grade because it often carries some of the deep themes that are resonant through an entire lifetime, but brings them to a place where a child who’s just becoming complex in their understanding of the world can begin to begin to digest. I love that space in literature and that ability to make difficult ideas accessible for some of our youngest readers.
You said accessible. My mind was putting an offering up that was palatable. It’s not just accessible. It’s something desirable the way you write about it. The storytelling is beautiful. It’s masterful and it draws people in. I’m grateful that books with messages like this are targeting this young girl’s age range. It’s delightful.
Thank you. I use this book and other novels in verse in my classroom to inspire students to write their own stories in verse about their own identities. We talked about these books that we’ve been studying in my classroom. Our celebrations of the complexity of our multiple identities and how as human beings, we often struggle to express all of the different beautiful, strange and unexpected parts of who we are.
Students choose an aspect of themselves that they think is interesting or an aspect of being human that they think is interesting. They create a fictional character where their fictional character is struggling with whatever that aspect of identity is. I had them write five poems that show that character struggling with the aspect and then they can decide whether they eventually find bravery and expressing it or they can decide how they want this character to turn out. This literature, middle grade literature, novels in verse particularly, I think offer a model for readers to try to do the same thing themselves and to try to create their own stories, articulate their own stories of struggle and healing. The students wrote some remarkable beautiful poetry.
Wisdom lies in knowing how deeply we desire and yearn to remain connected to memory, to those who have passed on, yet also recognizing the importance of forging our own paths. Share on XInspiring Young Authors: Writing Their Own Stories
If people want to reach out to you, how do you prefer they connect with you?
I would love for people to reach out to me. They can do it through different social media platforms. I’m on Facebook quite a lot, so friend me on Facebook. I’m at Marcella Pixley and I will accept the friend request. My Instagram and Bluesky are all good ways or email me at MarcellaPixley@Yahoo.com. I would love to talk to anybody out there who’s interested in publishing a book whose interested in writing about their own identities, what it means to write a book with Jewish themes in the world and any other reason as well. Please connect with me.
Thank you so much for the work you’re doing and for being willing to talk to us about it. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for the next book because I have a feeling there will be some others.
Can I tell you what it is?
Sure.
It’s on in the same vein as some of the stuff we’ve been talking about. The next book is a picture book called A Sip of Sunrise. I think that’s what it’s going to be called. We’re in the middle of negotiating the title, but it’s a picture book based on my grandfather’s immigration story from Poland to America and a very special soup pot that has been important in my family that has been passed from generation to generation. I look forward it in 2026 and hopefully, there’s another novel around the corner as well.
I look forward to them all. Thank you so much for taking time to share with us.
Thank you so much.
I wish you continued success.
I appreciate the chance to share with the community this way. Thanks for offering that to me.
It’s our honor. Thank you.
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Marcella Pixley is the Author of four acclaimed books for children that all explore complex family dynamics and mental health issues. Her first book Freak was published in 2007. It was a Kirkus Best Book of the Year. Her second book was Without Tess published in 2011. It was a Junior Library Guild selection. Her book Ready to Fall was published in 2017. It was a Bank Street Best Book of the Year. Her most novel Trowbridge Road was published in 2020. It was long listed for the national book award and was named a best book of 2020 by Shelf Awareness, Junior Library Guild, Amazon, Reading Group Choices and Kansas NEA. Marcella teaches eighth-grade Language Arts in Carlisle, Massachusetts.
Important Links
- Marcela Pixley
- Marcela Pixley on Instagram
- Marcela Pixley on Bluesky
- Neshama
- Trowbridge Road
- MarcellaPixley@Yahoo.com
- Freak
- Without Tess
- Ready to Fall
- Shelf Awareness
- Junior Library Guild
- Amazon
- Reading Group Choices
- Kansas NEA
About Marcella Pixley
Marcella Pixley is the author of four acclaimed books for children that all explore complex family dynamics and mental health.
Her first book – FREAK (2007) was a Kirkus Best Book of the Year,
Her second book – WITHOUT TESS (2011) was a Junior Library Guild Selection,
Her third book – READY TO FALL (2017) was a Bank Street Best Book of the Year.
Her novel, TROWBRIDGE ROAD (2020) was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was named a best book of 2020 by Shelf Awareness, Junior Library Guild, Amazon, Reading Group Choices and Kansas NEA.
Her new book Neshama explores the challenges of being unique as a teenager.
Marcella teaches 8th Grade Language Arts in Carlisle, Massachusetts.
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