Magic, Egyptian history, a spunky 12-year-old Egyptian American protagonist–Daughters of the Lamp has it all. This middle-grade fantasy is the debut novel from Nedda Lewers, which was released in February 2024, followed by its sequel Children of the Wind released in June 2024.
Sahara Rashad, the book’s main character, a born and raised New Yorker, goes to visit her family in Cairo for the first time. During that trip, inexplicable events begin to occur that are connected to a necklace her mother gave her before she passed away.
In an interview with Houston Family Magazine, Lewers “described her character and the events of the novel. “She’s very scientific and logical-minded, so she likes explanations for things,” Lewers said of Sahara.
“The necklace starts acting up, and then it gets stolen,” Lewers explained further. “Which leads to lots of secrets unfolding in the family.”
It’s revealed to Sahara that the women in her family have been guardians of Ali Baba’s underground treasure for a thousand years.
“The legacy started with a character named Morgana,” Lewers said, and the book alternates between Sahara’s point of view and Morgana’s from a thousand years in the past.
“What I love about the book is… we get to see how their stories are different in the beginning but sort of intersect,” Lewers stated.
The novel also explores the idea of what we inherit from our family members. Lewer’s Egyptian American identity informed the fantasy and mythology elements of the novel, aspects she wanted to bring into the middle-grade sphere.
“One of the reasons I chose middle grade was because some of the books I remember fondly are the ones I read when I was middle-grade age,” Lewers reminisced. “I loved fantasy, and I loved adventure and magic.”
When Lewers decided to go into writing, she knew she wanted to leave her mark on a genre of books that had so impacted her from an early age.
“What was missing for me as a child is that there weren’t characters that looked like me, there weren’t characters whose families looked and sounded like mine.”
She also decided right away that her main character would be Egyptian American. “[I decided that] so kids from different backgrounds… but very importantly, kids who have the experience of being second-generation Americans and having one foot in one country and one foot in another,” she said.
She wanted to explore the impact of those identities through Sahara’s eyes and show the process kids like her go through to accept all of those aspects about themselves.
“When you’re twelve, you want to check a box. Am I Egyptian? Am I American?” Lewers added. “And Sahara’s dad says it’s both.”
“She is more than one thing, in lots of ways. The key to her happiness with her identity is accepting all of those things,” Lewers asserted.
When discussing her path to becoming a writer, Lewers put it down to a large life transition giving her the push she needed to take the step of finally writing a book.
“Writing is something I always wanted to do as a kid,” she said. “I had wonderful teachers who made it a point to say to me that this [writing] is something you’re really good at,”
Lewers was an early childhood educator for 20 years before her family made a move across the country to Los Angeles, where she currently lives. She decided not to return to teaching right away in her new home to help her daughters as they adjusted to living in a new city.
“I was sort of like, I have these four or five hours while my husband is at work and my kids are at school, what do I do with myself?” she explained. “I thought, what’s the path for me?”
Writing became her refuge amidst the changes and uncertainties in her life at that time, as it had been for her as a child. Emboldened by the memories of her former teacher’s words, she began the process of writing “Daughters of the Lamp.”
“That was seven years ago now,” Lewers remembered. “I asked my parents to tell me stuff about Arabic folklore, and it just grew from there,” she said.
Through extensive research and trial and error, she began to put together the manuscript.
“Yes, I was a good writer, but I had no idea how to write a novel,” she laughed. “There was so much learning. I was a beginner again.”
Lewers reflected on the process now that she is on the other side of it, and affirmed that the uncertainty she felt when she moved was what allowed her to take the step to accomplish her wish of writing a novel.
“There was this big, scary change in my life, and I didn’t know what I was going to do next,” Lewers said. “But some wonderful things can come out of the not knowing, and allowing yourself to try something different and something new.”
Lewers hopes to expand the series into a quartet, and for now, plans to continue to write for the middle-grade age range. She spoke at length about her love for middle-grade books, and why they appeal to her so much as a writer.
“As you get older, you start having this realization in middle-grade years that not everything fits neatly into a box. Often the most important things in life don’t,” she said. “I think it’s that, kids having the realization of the gray [area] and being able to see the beauty in the gray. I just love that so much.”
