[stylist] synopsis

[loristay]

I'm not sure of the wisdom of giving us an entire scene rather than a summary of the plot.
But if you are intent on leaving it that way, I'd get rid of the word "suddenly."  Maybe just, "A hauntingly familiar voice said,..."
Also the time line is a bit skewed, mentioning Jen's school year after Pessi's mother's death when it is the opposite in the story.  But that's just my take.
Lori
On Nov 13, 2010, at 7:06:03 PM, "Judith Bron" <jbron at optonline.net> wrote:

From:   "Judith Bron" <jbron at optonline.net>
Subject:    [stylist] synopsis
Date:   November 13, 2010 7:06:03 PM EST
To: Stylist <stylist at nfbnet.org>
I redid the synopsis. If any of you were publishers, would you have an interest? Thanks, Judith

Synopsis of The Letter By, Judith Bron



She vaguely remembered the car hitting her. Now, seconds later, she gazed down a corridor lit with what seemed to be flickering candles. Suddenly she heard a voice.

"I'm here, Jennifer. I love you."

"Mmm.Mommy?" Jennifer stammered. "But you're dead!"

"No one is dead," her mother reassured her. "Go back. It's not your time."

"Go back to what?" Jennifer challenged. "To a foster family? To a town that mocks me, mocks my name, and all that I want to be? Why?"

"You have lessons to learn," her mother returned.

"What lessons? What can life teach me?"

"To live. To love. To hope. To know who you are, and what you are!"

"I love you mommy. I miss you every day of my life. No one here ..."

At the word "here" Jennifer slammed back into her body, aware of intense pain and completely disoriented.

Her foster mother stayed with Jennifer the entire day. While walking to her car later she remembered the strange messenger who delivered the only two surviving items from Jennifer's parents a few months earlier. After she accepted the two items, a small book and paper written in a foreign language with non-English characters, she ran to the window to watch him drive away. She thought about how freaked she was when no car appeared on the driveway or street and there was no man walking away from the house. Now Jennifer survived what should have been a deadly accident. She wished she knew the real story behind her foster daughter. 

But Jennifer didn't know the story behind her identity either. She lived with almost daily anti-Semitic harassment from her classmates and didn't know what it took to give or receive love.

The same day as Jennifer's accident in Curtis Cove, New York Pessi Goldberg, in Jenna, New York avoided another fight with her very ill mother. Her mother tells her constantly that it wasn't normal for a sixteen year old girl to devote herself exclusively to her family and homework. Pessi vehemently disagreed and sunk further into her world of seclusion. 

Chavy Levy, Pessi's classmate sees Pessi later at a lecture at their school. She is intent on breaking through Pessi's thick walls and enticing her to at least sit with her classmates. Eventually Pessi gives in halfheartedly. 

Before her mother dies Pessi emerges from her solitary world and her mother is happy that her daughter has joined the world of active teenage girls. But Pessi's reaction to her death is one of question. How could an Almighty she has believed in her entire life do such a thing as take away her mother and the mother of her two younger siblings? For the first time in her young life Pessi has the belief in her world challenged.

Jennifer spends the school year confronting bigotry and her own sense of inferiority. She decides to go to an observant Jewish summer camp and learns about what she is. She returns from camp intent on living according to the ways of her people.

Pessi has emerged from underneath her thick defensive walls and is often encouraged when she hears her deceased mother's voice telling her that she can do whatever she is facing at the moment. Pessi's family moves next door to Chavy's family and the two get ready to spend their senior summer doing nothing.

Jennifer is placed with a family in Jenna, but that family doesn't work out. Rabbi Levy, Chavy's father, consents to take Jennifer into their home and it isn't long before Jennifer's hidden identity starts emerging. The reality of her life not only affects Jennifer, but the Levy family, Pessi and the new world Jennifer has come to accept as her own. Not surprisingly, The Letter contains Jennifer's mysterious identity, is the impetus for criminals to kidnap her and opens new doors for Jennifer's new biological family.




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