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. Comprising five decades of correspondence, the novel skillfully weaves Leah’s high hopes and deep disappointments as she navigates relationships, marriage, divorce, single motherhood, financial struggles, and professional ups and downs. Relentlessly optimistic and cheerful on the outside, Leah’s carefully chosen words hide disturbing truths. As her letters turn increasingly introspective, the secrets and shame that shaped her trajectory unravel. This is an epistolary novel at its best, inviting the reader to play detective and probe between the lines of Leah’s insistently rosy portrayal of her life. Gradually piecing together her true circumstances, we are charmed into forgiving her minor deceptions and richly rewarded with the profound insights that Leah’s self-constructed narrative reveals.
