After emigrating to the United States in the mid-1960s, Leah maintains her connection to Israel by writing an annual letter on the Jewish New Year to her old friends from a women’s teaching college. Composed of fifty-one letters penned between 1966 and 2016, the novel skillfully documents Leah’s high hopes and deep disappointments, from relationships, marriage, and divorce to raising two children by herself, financial debt, and professional ups and downs. Leah rarely acknowledges the injustices she has had to overcome, but her letters turn increasingly introspective, ultimately exposing the secrets that shaped her trajectory from a naive but driven social climber to an independent woman at peace with herself. This is an epistolary novel at its best, inviting the reader to play detective and read between the lines of Leah’s insistently rosy portrayal of her life. As we forgive her small deceptions and gradually piece together her true circumstances, we are richly rewarded with the profound truths that Leah’s self-constructed narrative reveals.
