[stylist] synopsis

[Judith Bron]

Does this work?  Judith

Jennifer Rabinowitz, unconscious after being hit by a car, looks around the strange place she ended up in.  In front of her is a corridor that seems to be lit with flickering candles.  Suddenly her long deceased mother is talking to her.  Jennifer, whose life is dismal due to the constant anti Semitic derisions by her classmates, wants to stay with her mother.  But her mother tells her that its not yet her time to stay.  She has to learn, "To live.  To love.  To hope.  To know who you are, and what you are!"  Jennifer tries to change her mother's mind, but minutes later slams back into her body, aware of the pain.

Jennifer's foster mother, Sheila, spent most of the day with her injured foster daughter.  While heading to her car she remembers the strange messenger a few months earlier who delivered the only possessions left by Jennifer's parents, a little book with an inserted paper written in foreign writing.  The messenger handed Sheila the items and left.  After closing the door Sheila ran to her window to watch him drive away, but no car appeared on the street or driveway.  She couldn't see a man walking away from the house.  Now she thought about Jennifer's survival of what should have been a deadly accident.  She wondered about the items in her possession that the messenger told her to give to Jennifer on her seventeenth birthday.  The story begins with all this mystery surrounding an orphaned Jewish girl from Curtis Cove, New York. 

 Meanwhile, on the same day in Jenna, New York Pessi Goldberg is talking to her very ill mother.  Shrouded in her reclusive personality, Pessi disagrees with her mother about getting involved with the girls at school.  Pessi insists that it's her life and if she wants to be alone so be it.  She stomps out of the house like a belligerent child leaving her mother on the sofa in the dining room of their poverty stricken home.  

That afternoon Pessi decides to attend a lecture at her school.  Her classmate Chavy Levy starts to bring her out of the protective shell Pessi has shrouded herself in.  Pessi's life is a bout to change forever.  

One morning a few months later Pessi goes to her mother's room to help her only to discover a cold motionless body lying on the mattress.  Totally bereft Pessi gently shakes her mother's remains begging her to say something.  

Heart broken, Pessi now questions the motives of an Almighty she has believed in her entire life.  For the first time in her life she has her solid faith in the Almighty challenged as she tries to overcome her devastating loss.

Jennifer continues to puzzle over her depressing Jewish identity.  Eventually her foster mother is helpful in getting her registered in an observant Jewish summer camp hoping that the camp can teach Jennifer something about her roots and identity.  Jennifer returns from camp intent on living as an observant Jewess.  Again Sheila is helpful in getting her placed with a family in Jenna.  This family doesn't work out, and Rabbi Levy, Chavy's father, agrees to take Jennifer into their home.  

The lives of Jennifer from the public schools of Curtis Cove, and the lives of Pessi and Chavy from an observant Jewish Girls' school in Jenna become entwined forever.  

The small book and letter left by her parents has become a fixture in Jennifer's backpack.  She eventually begins to learn the Hebrew language that both the small book and letter are written in.  She is able to learn from the letter her Hebrew name is Breindle and her mother Channah.  

The day before the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashannah, the high school principal Mrs. Newman asks Jennifer if she has a Hebrew name.  She tells the principal her Hebrew name.  The principal asks her how she knows this and Jennifer pulls the small packet out of her backpack.  The principal pales when she sees these things. 

 Later that day the principal asks Rabbi Levy to put the packet in a safe place.

Pessi learns that her father intends to remarry.  She vows she will never accept this.  

Unbeknownst to Jennifer, the letter has a financial section.  Criminals get hold of this information and kidnap Jennifer from a Jenna street.  They take her to a hotel room, tie her up like a hunted animal and the criminals proceed to have a drinking party.  When her abductors fall into a drunken slumber Jennifer works off the ropes binding her arms, slides off the bed and, braced on her now free hands begins hopping to the door.  

With her legs still tightly bound she hobbles into the hall where another hotel guest brings her into his room and calls the police.

Eventually the contents of the letter containing Jennifer's true identity are disclosed to her.  But she has a hard time dealing with her newly revealed identity.  She can't deal with the fact that she is not the same person she has lived with for the past 17 years.

Both Pessi and Jennifer have to overcome problems with their identity throughout the novel.  Both have to deal with drastic changes in their lives.  Both characters have to come to an understanding of who and what they are in a world filled with danger, fear and self doubt.  Painfula questions experienced by teenagers everywhere.