{"id":36785,"date":"2025-09-04T17:12:38","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T21:12:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=36785"},"modified":"2025-09-04T17:12:47","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T21:12:47","slug":"aurora-business-owner-is-first-time-novelist-with-the-red-apple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aurora-business-owner-is-first-time-novelist-with-the-red-apple\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora business owner is first-time novelist with The Red Apple"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Revital Mula and her grandmother shared an unbreakable bond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Growing up in Montreal after emigrating from Israel, Revi spent just about every Saturday with her grandparents as they shared harrowing stories about their journey to Canada, fleeing Poland near the start of the Second World War, and doing everything they could to survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As she got older, she knew these stories had to be preserved for posterity, and at one point even formed the kernel of a book \u2013 but doing anything further with the story was put on hold when marriage, motherhood to twins, and the establishment of Monaco Interiors took over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the lessons she learned from her grandmother took on added resonance when war broke out in Gaza following the attacks of October 7, 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI woke up on October 8 and said, \u2018Okay, I have to be involved in what\u2019s going on and I have to finish this story,\u201d says Mula.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result is The Red Apple, a first-time novel for the Aurora-based designer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Red Apple follows sixteen-year-old Hanna who is forced to flee with her boyfriend, Ben, \u201cleaving behind everything she knows in a desperate bid to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFrom the occupied streets of Lublin to the freezing depths of a Soviet labour camp, The Red Apple follows one young woman\u2019s harrowing journey through violence, loss, and unthinkable choices,\u201d reads the synopsis. \u201cHaunted by what she witnesses \u2013 and what she must do to stay alive \u2013 Hanna clings to the only constant left: love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut survival comes at a price. Raw, intense, and unflinchingly honest, The Red Apple is a powerful work of historical fiction, based on the true story of the author\u2019s grandparents. In a world at war, this is a story not just of endurance, but of the quiet, defiant strength it takes to keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In picking up the story, Revi says she wanted people to \u201ctruly understand\u201d what people like her grandmother experienced \u2013 \u201cleaving everything behind, losing your entire family, all the while being in love.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a story of love, and I think it\u2019s a story of hope,\u201d she says. \u201cI really grew up with this feeling that everybody was equal, that racism was evil, and I grew up that way, I think, because of my grandparents\u2019 experience,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s not just about her being Jewish, it\u2019s about families that got obliterated because of hate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In picking up the threads of the book again after so long, Mula undertook extensive research of the era, seeking out anything she could get her hands on \u201cto really get a sense of what young women felt like during that time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of vulnerabilities that women would feel I know men wouldn\u2019t feel, and I really wanted to include those vulnerabilities, maybe more so than what my grandmother was willing to share,\u201d she says, noting that some of the rawer details in the story may have been omitted by her grandmother. \u201cI feel like she never wanted to hurt me or traumatize me further because they really did tell me a lot of things. My grandmother suffered a lot of PTSD after the war and I think talking about it made me feel better but, at the same time, I don\u2019t think she wanted me to suffer alongside her. There\u2019s a lot of generational trauma there. Women were really, really at risk every day. They\u2019re at risk every day in the war, not unlike some of the gender-based violence that happens in any war is 99 per cent targeted at women. I think it\u2019s important that people can truly resonate with and understand what\u2019s happening in the greater world through her eyes and experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the fact that when Revi told her grandmother she had visited Poland and saw many of the places she described in her stories she was greeted by, \u201cWhy\u2019d you waste your money and go there?\u201d her granddaughter ventures she would have been proud with the finished product that is The Red Apple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think she would have been very happy the story lives,\u201d she says, adding that being a first-time author is a bit surreal. \u201cI think I am still living in that suspended world where I can\u2019t believe I wrote a book, it\u2019s published and people are reading it. I want people to enjoy the novel, first of all. I think it\u2019s a great story, moves quickly, and it\u2019s interesting and suspenseful in some ways. When they get to the end, I would like them to remember that hate has consequences \u2013 and it\u2019s not just about Jewish people. Hate has consequences for everyone and if people can put the book down and tell themselves that they will move through their life without carrying that burden of hate, I think that would be the greatest thing in the world for me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A book signing with author Revi Mula will take place at Royal Rose Gallery (15210 Yonge Street, Aurora) on September 21 at 7 p.m. To register, call 905-503-0121. For more on The Red Apple, visit theredapple.ca.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Revi Mula\u2019s book charts grandparents\u2019 harrowing flight from Poland<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":36786,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/2025-09-04-04.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-9zj","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-07 09:51:54","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36785"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36787,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36785\/revisions\/36787"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}