[stylist] synopsis

[Judith Bron]

I'm hoping this will peak the publisher's interest.  Does it peak yours?  Thanks, 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 abysmal due to constant anti Semitic derisions by classmates, wants to stay with her mother.  But her mother tells her that it's 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 seconds 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.  Heading to her car she thinks back to a few months earlier when a STRANGE MESSENGER delivered the only possessions left by Jennifer's parents, a book with an inserted paper written in a foreign language.  The messenger handed Sheila the items and left.  After closing the door Sheila ran to the 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 that the messenger told her to give to Jennifer on her seventeenth birthday.   

On the same morning in Jenna, New York PESSI GOLDBERG confronts her very ill mother. Content with her sequestered life their disagreements have defined their relationship for months.  Pessi stomps out of the house like a belligerent child leaving her mother on the sofa in their poverty stricken home.  

That afternoon Pessi attends a lecture at her school.  Her classmate CHAVY LEVY approaches her at the back of the room and encourages the recluse to come sit with other classmates.  Chavy's sense of humor and winning personality helps Pessi emerge from the thick defensive walls she has erected around herself. 

One morning Pessi goes to her mother's room and finds her cold motionless body lying on the mattress.  Heart broken, Pessi questions the motives of an Almighty she has believed in her entire life.  

Jennifer continues to puzzle over her mysterious Jewish identity.  On her seventeenth birthday Sheila presents her with her parents' possessions.  Jennifer can't read the foreign language the paper and book are written in, but places them in her backpack.   In her darkened bedroom on most nights Jennifer clutches her parents' possessions and mouths silently, "Mommy and daddy, please guide me to the life you wanted for me.  I love you."  

Sheila is helpful in getting her registered in an observant Jewish summer camp.  When she boards the bus for the ride back to Curtis Cove after camp she feels like she is deserting her new identity.  Back at Sheila's she makes her desire to continue living as an observant Jew known.  She is 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 life 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.    

 Jennifer begins learning the Hebrew language that both the small book and letter are written in.  She discovers from the letter her Hebrew name is Breindle and her mother was Channah.  

 When Mrs. Newman, the high school principal asks Jennifer if she has a Hebrew name, she tells her the name written in the letter.  Jennifer pulls the small packet out and Mrs. Newman pales upon seeing the items. 

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

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 makes it 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.

The contents of the letter containing Jennifer's true identity are disclosed, but she has a hard time dealing with her newly revealed identity.  She vows to keep it secret.  

 Pessi's class elects her president.  The reclusive ragamuffin disappeared.  At the end of the book Jennifer realizes that what her mother wanted her to                                                                                                                learn has been accomplished.  She has learned To live.  To love.  To hope.  To know who she is, and what she is!