Two Israeli girls, daughters of Holocaust survivors, are expat friends in Brazil. In 1964, at 14, they must separate as Ruth continues to migrate to North America. They maintain a correspondence that lasts for twenty years until the telecommunications age. Ruth has to learn English and assimilate into schools in Toronto, Canada. In 1967, her family is finally allowed to migrate to the US, where they had not been allowed in by the exclusionary laws, the 1924 Johnson-Reed Immigration Act. In a Canadian and then a NYC high school, Ruth relies on the correspondence as a lifeline as she tries to assimilate. Ruth saved the letters which form the basis of this epistolary memoir, with reflections on a Bildungsroman-style story of two Jewish adolescents in the latter part of the 20th century. As they mature, they remain steadfast to each other and to the Jewish principles handed down by their parents. Fifty years after parting, the friends re-read aloud the saved correspondence that they exchanged as young women. The experience of hearing their words written in letters and sent like a bridge across the continent and half a lifetime is a revelation that stuns the friends: the antecedent voice spoken in the concrete voice of the present.
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