Fic­tion

The Belief in Angels

Jen­nifer Dylan Yates
  • From the Publisher
May 22, 2014

Grow­ing up in her par­ents’ crazy hip­pie house­hold on a tiny island off the coast of Boston, Jules’s imag­i­na­tive sense of humor is the weapon she wields to dodge house­hold chaos. But some­where between rou­tine dis­ci­pline with horse­whips, gun-wav­ing gam­bling debt col­lec­tors, and LSD-laced break­fast cere­al adven­tures, tragedy strikes with the death of her younger broth­er — a blow from which Jules may nev­er ful­ly recover.

Jules’ sto­ry alter­nates with that of her Grand­fa­ther Samuel, a man with a sad sto­ry of his own. Samuel, once called Sza­ja, is an Ortho­dox Jew — who lived through the mur­der­ous Ukran­ian pogroms of the 1920s, the Maj­danek Death Camp, and the tor­pe­do­ing of the Mefku­ra — whose sur­vival came at a price that’s haunt­ed him for years.

Discussion Questions