[stylist] synopsis

Wed Oct 20 02:46:47 UTC 2010

Thanks Danni, Judith
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Danielle Montour" <hypoplexer at gmail.com>
To: "Writer's Division Mailing List" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2010 6:50 PM
Subject: Re: [stylist] synopsis


> 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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