Leah Hager Cohen

Maybe stories don’t make things happen, but maybe through stories we find we are not alone.
from To & Fro by Leah Hager Cohen

Ani follows a man off “to and fro,” a journey in which she encounters different groups and new insights. Her first journey took place after she and her mother were exiled from their home in the middle of winter, during which Ani’s mother died.

Ani has a brown book, although she cannot read. A kitten she calls Company that she struggles to keep alive. A scroll in a bottle on a necklace.

Life is walking and arriving and leave-taking, each a place of learning and growth, each a place of gift receiving.

Turn the book around, and there is another story.

The psychologist diagnosed Oppositional defiant disorder. The psychotherapist mentioned executive function disorder. The neuropsychologist proclaimed Annamae had a “stellar brain.”

Annamae thought differently, deeply, and it made her lonely. She knew people could never understand each other, that words failed, language was a net through which words spilled “like pennies through the holes.” She would not do her creative writing assignment and was posed to fail the class. No one saw what she saw, the deadly seriousness of one’s complete control over the characters one created. She saw that letters had colors and personalities, and she recognized the stories that Rav Harriet told about alef-bet and the creation of the world.

She had a brown notebook called Company in which she wrote and drew, but lost it. She had a message in a bottle necklace, but it disappeared.

Fantasy or reality, each story is mesmerizing, taking one into an unforgettable and unique character’s deepest thoughts as she journeys through life. When you are finished reading both, you will want to turn the book again and keep reading, realizing how much more there is to discover.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.… (mere)

Wow. This book snuck up on me. It seemed like an ordinary love story but became so much more. I had to re-read the ending the morning after I'd finished it just to be sure Esker did what she did.

Ann James is a teenager who has broken both her heels in a disturbing way. She is being tutored at home by her favourite teacher, Esker. Ann's parents are long separated, but still married. Her father, Wally and Esker fall in love. The private school were Esker works threatens to fire her for an inapproiate relationship with a married parent, and Esker must make a decision. Sounds like a beach read...chick lit, right? But it isn't. It's deeper.

The reviewer who posted before me wrote that she thought "Esker, might grow and chose to be a different person. She might step outside her comfort zone and chose to be happy and live life. But does she?" I say that's exactly what she did. She left her ghosts behind, and the safe job and home she'd known ever since graduation. She is becoming a new person, but not without a cost to herself and others.… (mere)