From Dust, a Flame

Rebecca Podos, Lambda Award-winning author of Like Water, returns with a contemporary Jewish fantasy of enduring love, unfathomable loss, and the power of stories to hold us together when it seems that nothing else can.
Hannah’s whole life has been spent in motion. Her mother has kept her and her brother, Gabe, on the road for as long as she can remember, leaving a trail of rental homes and faded relationships behind them. No roots, no family but one another, and no explanations.
All that changes on Hannah’s seventeenth birthday when she wakes up transformed, a pair of golden eyes with knife-slit pupils blinking back at her from the mirror—the first of many such impossible mutations. Promising that she knows someone who can help, her mother leaves Hannah and Gabe behind to find a cure. But as the days turn to weeks and their mother doesn’t return, they realize it’s up to them to find the truth.
What they discover is a family they never knew and a history more tragic and fantastical than Hannah could have dreamed—one that stretches back to her grandmother’s childhood in Prague under the Nazi occupation, and beyond, into the realm of Jewish mysticism and legend. As the past comes crashing into the present, Hannah must hurry to unearth their family’s secrets in order to break the curse and save the people she loves most, as well as herself.\nFrom School Library Journal\nGr 9 Up-When Hannah wakes up on her 17th birthday with the eyes of a snake, her eccentric mother, Mali, promises she can fix Hannah's ailment, and then leaves without a trace. When time passes with Mali nowhere to be found and Hannah developing new animal-like physical traits, Hannah and her brother, Gabe, receive notice that their Jewish grandmother, Jitka, whom they have never met, has died. They head to the small town of Fox Hollows to meet their mom's family for the first time, hoping for answers. The siblings befriend Ari, a cool, confident, queer, Jewish local in town, whose grandmother was a beloved spiritual healer, to help investigate the disappearance of their mom and Hannah's ever-changing body. They uncover a haunting history, one that proves we as people are bound by the actions of our ancestors. Podos's book bridges three generations of young women and the burdens they can't escape. Present-day Hannah's coming-of-age story is in the forefront, but there are flashbacks to 1939 and 1990, when her grandmother and mother were teens, that shed light on Hannah's current situation. The story of Jitka narrowly escaping the Holocaust and Mali's traumatic first love story are revealed in detail. Letters are interwoven into the story, helping to drive the plot forward. The novel is seeped in traditional Jewish folktales of magic, golems, and demons, and authentically ties in Jewish ritual and holidays. VERDICT This is the queer Jewish YA fantasy novel readers need, featuring complex characters to adore and family secrets they'll want to uncover.-Danielle Winterα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.