Rachel Caplin, THE SPOON AND THE SEA: A Novel
Totally Booked with Zibby
Zibby Owens
4.5 • 643 Ratings
🗓️ 9 December 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Zibby interviews author Rachel Caplin about THE SPOON AND THE SEA, a gorgeous, richly woven historical novel about memory, identity, motherhood, and the tangled threads of family across continents and generations. Rachel shares the extraordinary true family story that inspired the book and how writing helped her navigate profound grief after losing her grandmother. She also talks about her unlikely path to authorship from Australia to Israel, her experience navigating the publishing world as an Israeli debut author, and the community that rallied around her.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best-selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators, whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive |
| 0:24.0 | look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't |
| 0:29.3 | have to. |
| 0:30.3 | Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. |
| 0:36.2 | For more information, go to zibbimedia.com and follow me on Instagram |
| 0:40.1 | at Zibby Owens. |
| 0:44.4 | Rachel Kaplan is the author of The Spoon and the Sea, a best-selling historical novel, and |
| 0:51.3 | Vogel Literary Award finalist. She is originally from Australia and moved to Israel |
| 0:56.8 | in 2015, where she currently balances her writing with a career in the tech center, the tech |
| 1:02.3 | sector, and a busy family life with her husband and their three young daughters. Hi, Rachel. Thanks so much |
| 1:08.6 | for coming on. Totally booked to talk about The Spoon and the Sea. Congratulations. |
| 1:13.2 | Thank you so much for having me. Oh, it's my pleasure. And are you in Australia? Where are you today? |
| 1:18.3 | In Israel. In Israel. Amazing. I've been living here for almost 10 years now. |
| 1:22.9 | Oh, my gosh. Amazing. And I will cut that part out. Let me just start again. But you're originally Australian, right? |
| 1:28.5 | I am. And the accent confuses everyone, so feel free to keep it in. Okay, fine. Okay. Rachel, the Spoon and the Sea. Tell listeners about your book. |
| 1:38.1 | Sure. The Spoon and the Sea is a historical fiction novel that centers around Ashi. He's a grown man, but as a young child, |
| 1:46.3 | he was basically left to be raised by his Arab father on the island of Zanzibar, where he was |
| 1:51.6 | born, after his Jewish mother Rose left him to go back to her hometown in England. |
| 1:57.6 | And the story takes place in Jerusalem. |
| 1:59.7 | Rose is in her final days, growing old in the grips of dementia. |
| 2:04.7 | And Rose and Ashi are trying to bridge this gap to empty that sea between them to reconcile |
| 2:09.1 | all of the decisions and all of the events in history that took them apart over so many years |
... |
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