Welcome back to Jen’s Jewels, your go-to destination for discovering your next great read. This week, I’m thrilled to shine the spotlight on THE GATES OF MIDNIGHT by New York Times bestselling author Helene Wecker. The final installment in the award-winning The Golem and the Jinni trilogy, this captivating conclusion brings readers back to the unforgettable world of Chava and Ahmad. Filled with magic, history, friendship, and love, THE GATES OF MIDNIGHT is a fitting finale to a beloved series. Read on as Helene takes us behind the scenes, sharing the inspiration behind the book and the characters that have captured readers’ hearts.
LIGHTNING ROUND
What’s your favorite way to spend a crisp September afternoon?
Tidying up the garden! I grow vegetables and flowers (poorly) in my yard, and by September all the summer crops are pretty much done for. I spend at least one full weekend every autumn clearing all the wilted plants out of the beds and giving the shrubs a serious pruning. Then later in the fall, I gather up the fallen leaves from the trees behind our house and use them to mulch the beds.
What’s your go-to fall drink, snack, or sweet treat while writing?
Around here the persimmons start appearing in the grocery stores in late September. My daughter and I could eat a dozen a day between us. It’s an expensive habit, so it’s probably good that they’re only around for a couple of months. Fall is also when I switch from seltzer to tea in the afternoons. My current fall favorite is a very smoky Lapsang Souchong that tastes like it’s made for lounging in front of a roaring fireplace.
If your main character could plan the perfect early autumn getaway, where would they go?
Chava would plan an entire weekend of leaf peeping in the Hudson Valley, and she’d drag Ahmad along and bore him with botany facts. Ahmad would use the opportunity to go someplace warm, maybe a city like Lisbon or Barcelona where he could study the architecture.
THE FALL INSPIRATION
September often feels like a fresh start. Did writing this book mark a new beginning or challenge for you as an author?
This book definitely presented a challenge, namely, how to conclude Chava and Ahmad’s story in a way that felt meaningful and complete. I had the ending mostly in mind, so I knew where I was going – but the process of getting there kept changing! Once I worked out the kinks in the plot, it was a lot easier to give them the send-off that I’d hoped for.
What was the very first spark that inspired this story?
The seed for the Golem and the Jinni series was planted by a friend of mine in my MFA program. She’d challenged me to add a fantastical element to the realist, earnest, and slightly boring stories I was writing about my two immigrant families: my own Jewish family and my husband’s Arab-American family. She knew that I was a lover of fantasy and sci-fi, and she said, “The next story I see from you can be about your families, but I want it to be fantastical.” After that, I went back to my apartment and wrote the first twelve pages of what would eventually become THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI. It was like she’d freed me! For THE GATES OF MIDNIGHT specifically, the spark came from the end of THE HIDDEN PALACE, when Chava decides to move to Brooklyn and Ahmad leaves New York for Chicago. I decided that I wanted to explore what their new lives looked like separately before bringing them back together again, which is why they spend much of the book physically apart.
Tell us about a scene that changed dramatically between your first draft and the final manuscript. What led to the revision?
There’s a scene early in the book that takes place in Chicago, at the architecture firm where Ahmad works. Ahmad’s at his drafting table, drawing up cross-sections of the decorative elements for an office building. The first time I wrote the scene, he was in conversation with a coworker who started asking a bunch of nosy questions. Basically, the guy was starting to realize that something about Ahmad didn’t make sense. Ahmad took it as a warning that it was time to leave the firm, before the man did too much digging. The scene was okay, but as a reason for Ahmad to leave the firm it didn’t have much dramatic energy. In fact, Ahmad’s whole storyline needed a tune-up. In the rewrite, I made Ahmad much more frustrated in his ambitions. He’s been working on the sidelines for years, waiting for the promotion he deserves. Instead of a lowly coworker, one of the firm’s partners approaches Ahmad and announces that he’s taking him for a ride in his two-seater airplane. Ahmad has no idea what to make of this. Clearly the man wants to get him alone for a conversation, but is he being promoted? Tested somehow? We sit in that tension with Ahmad until the end of the airplane ride, when Ahmad receives the answer to his question – but by that point, the news is almost secondary to the fact that Ahmad has fallen in love with aviation. The first version was a relatively boring, office-bound conversation; the finished version has a completely different energy and is one of my favorite scenes in the book.
As the seasons change, many of us find ourselves reflecting on the past. Did any personal memories, traditions, or meaningful places influence this book?
In THE GATES OF MIDNIGHT, Chava and Ahmad have settled into a long-distance relationship, with Chava in New York and Ahmad in Chicago. They talk on the phone every night, even though in 1930 a long-distance call was pretty expensive. While I was writing their phone conversations, I drew on my memories of my own long-distance calls with my now-husband, when we were both graduate students but in different states. Neither of us wanted to hang up and study, so we’d talk for hours instead, about whatever we could think of. As annoying as it was to live apart, the calls had their own special magic, and I tried to give that to Chava and Ahmad.
THE PERSONAL TOUCH
Fall is the perfect season to curl up with a great book. What’s currently at the top of your TBR pile?
I’m partway through HOMEBOUND by Portia Elan, which is a multi-threaded novel about technology, ecology, and identity (among other things!) that takes place between the 1980s and the far future. So far it reminds me of Anthony Doerr’s CLOUD CUCKOO LAND, a book I truly loved. After that will be Andrew Sean Greer’s VILLA COCO, because if I can’t run off to Italy then at least I can read his marvelous descriptions.
If readers could step into one scene from your book for a day, which would you choose and why?
One of the supporting characters in THE GATES OF MIDNIGHT is Selma Radzin, who runs a speakeasy hidden in a bakery on the Lower East Side. It isn’t fancy, and the only alcohol she serves is mediocre red wine, but the regulars love the place anyway. Every night they gather around the tables for pastries and conversation, and to listen to the new singer Selma hired, a girl with a voice like an angel. It’s lively and cozy all at once, the sort of place where you can relax for an evening and forget about the world beyond the door. That’s the place I’d pick for my readers!
LOOKING AHEAD
Can you give readers a sneak peek at what you’re working on next—without giving away any spoilers?
I only have a vague idea of what I want to work on next, so I doubt I can spoil anything! I’d like to write a novel that’s set in an invented world where I get to make up the rules. It’s going to involve a society that runs on an odd mix of science and religion, and honestly that’s as far as I’ve gotten!
Where can readers connect with you and stay up to date on your latest books? Please share your website, newsletter, and social media links.
I always post the latest news and event updates at my website, and while you’re there you can subscribe to my monthly newsletter, Taking Shape. I’m also on Instagram and Threads.
BONUS: The Author’s Playlist
Share 3–5 songs that capture the mood of your book or inspired you while writing.
I’m very particular about the music I listen to while I’m writing. It has to be energetic, but not intrusive. I made four different playlists for The Gates of Midnight and listened to them over and over again. Here are some of my favorite tracks, one from each list:
In a Spiral – Phantogram
Phantogram is deeply reliable writing music, with a good beat and lots of interesting layers. I basically want a wall of music while I write, and Phantogram delivers.
Soledad – Bomba Estéreo
Another trick I use is to listen to music in a language I’m not proficient in, so the lyrics don’t distract me. And since I’ve forgotten most of my high-school Spanish, that means I get to listen to Bomba Estéreo. Li Saumet’s voice is so crisp and arresting that I don’t care I’m only catching one word in five.
Eternal – Keep Shelly In Athens
This is the kind of song you play while driving around on a warm summer night with all the windows down. Dark, moody, haunting.
Run the Wild Flowers – Friendly Fires
Electro-pop with a great melody. Something about the staccato synthesizer and the tone of the lyrics – if we reconnect the wires, dive into the dream behind our eyes – makes me imagine two robots in love who want to escape their programming and run away together.
THE GATES OF MIDNIGHT by Helene Wecker
Narrator: George Guidall
The Golem and the Jinni
A Novel
The long‑awaited final installment in the award‑winning, bestselling Golem and the Jinni trilogy.
At the beginning of The Hidden Palace, the second book in Helene Wecker’s Golem and Jinni trilogy, Ahmad the jinni travels to Syria with the copper flask that holds the captured wizard Yehudah Schaalman. There in the desert he buries the flask for all time… or so he thinks.
In The Gates of Midnight, the riveting conclusion to the saga of the Golem and the Jinni, it’s 1930 and three decades have passed since Schaalman’s defeat. Chava the golem quietly tends to her house and garden in Brooklyn, hoping to create a refuge for other magical beings. Meanwhile, Ahmad has found employment as an architect in Chicago, helping to build its towering skyline above the prairie.
But all is not well in the desert. Schaalman has managed to trick an unsuspecting passerby into digging up the flask, and now it passes from hand to hand as the wizard possesses his victims ‑‑ first a French soldier traveling to New York, then a small‑time mobster ‑‑ all in an effort to get to Chava, the only one who can release him from his prison.
Meanwhile others are gravitating to New York as well: Ahmad, who has lost his job following the 1929 stock market crash; the mysterious Thomas Beshara, a riveter on the rising Empire State Building, who also has hidden ties to Chava and Ahmad; and Kreindel Altschul, who still grieves her own destroyed golem Yossele. Does the reluctant Kreindel hold the key to saving Chava from Schaalman’s revenge? Will Schaalman succeed in escaping the flask, binding Chava to his will, and re‑enslaving Ahmad? Or can they find a way to finally defeat him and free themselves from his power? An earth‑shaking finale to the brilliant trilogy.
Fantasy Historical [ HarperCollins, On Sale: September 15, 2026, Hardcover / e-Book / audiobook, ISBN: 9780062468680 / eISBN: 9780062468703 ]
Buy THE GATES OF MIDNIGHT: Amazon.com | Kindle | BN.com | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play | Books-A-Million | Indie BookShops | Libro.fm | Audible | Walmart.com | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon FR
About Helene Wecker
Helene Wecker is Jewish, and her husband’s family is Syrian, giving her a unique perspective on these two culture’s mystical traditions and the immigrant experiences of both groups. Her fiction has appeared in the online magazine Joyland, and she has read from her stories at the KGB Bar in Manhattan and the Barbershop Reading Series in San Francisco. She received a B.A. from Carleton College in Minnesota and an M.F.A. from Columbia University in New York. A Chicago-area native who’s made her home in Minneapolis, Seattle, and New York, she now lives near San Francisco, CA with her husband and daughter.
WEBSITE | FACEBOOK | GOODREADS | INSTAGRAM
About Jennifer Vido
Jennifer Vido is the award-winning author of the Gull Island series, a collection of sweet Lowcountry romances inspired by her love of coastal living and small-town charm. Her debut novel, Serendipity by the Sea, won Best First Book from the New Jersey Romance Writers Golden Leaf Contest. Jennifer has been named Baltimore Magazine’s Best Local Author for three consecutive years (2024–2026) and was named The Baltimore Sun’s Best Author in its 2026 Best of Readers’ Choice Awards. When she’s not writing romance, Jennifer shares her love of books through her weekly Jen’s Jewels column, where she spotlights exciting new releases and talented authors.
No Comments
Comments are closed.