[stylist] synopsis

[Danielle Montour]

Nice! That's really good! I like it.

Danni

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Judith Bron <jbron at optonline.net
To: Stylist <stylist at nfbnet.org
Date sent: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 17:02:01 -0400
Subject: [stylist] synopsis

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.


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