Fic­tion

Sarah/​Sara

  • Review
By – September 8, 2011

An unusu­al Ortho­dox Jew­ish adven­ture sto­ry, a Jew­ish Into the Wild. The premise is cin­e­mat­ic, and pow­er­ful: an Ortho­dox young woman, inno­cent in so many ways, decides to take a trip in a kayak, on her own, across the Arc­tic Ocean, not long after she has endured two sig­nif­i­cant tragedies: the unex­pect­ed death of her par­ents, and then, a ter­ror­ist bomb in a Jerusalem café that left her encased in tubes and ban­dages from head to foot — so severe­ly injured that she missed her par­ents’ funeral. 

These dev­as­tat­ing events lead Sarah to do what she’d dreamed — to explore her emo­tion­al and spir­i­tu­al self with a voy­age into the cold Arc­tic wilder­ness. Per­ilous, fright­en­ing, and in the end sur­pris­ing, this is the sto­ry of one woman and her faith, loss, adven­ture, and transformation.

Esther Cohen is a poet, nov­el­ist, teacher, and cul­tur­al activist. Her most recent poet­ry book is God is a Tree (Plea­sure Boat).

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