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OLDER FICTION
Podos, Rebecca

From Dust, a Flame

416 pp. | HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray | February, 2022 | Trade ISBN 978-0-06-269906-0 $17.99 | Ebook ISBN 978-0-06-269907-7 $11.99
(2) YA Hannah doesn't think too deeply about why her peripatetic mother, Malka, has always moved their family from place to place. Now, having earned a scholarship to a prestigious high school, high-achieving Hannah thinks she's finally convinced Mom to settle down. Then she wakes up on her seventeenth birthday to eyes that have turned golden and snakelike. The next day it's fangs. And then Mom disappears. An anonymous letter draws Hannah (now with ram's horns) and her older brother to a small town in upstate New York in time to sit shiva for Jitka, the grandmother they never knew, and to meet the rest of their extended Jewish family. Hannah suspects that Mom is nearby; and in uncovering her family's past, she believes she can solve the mysteries surrounding her own bodily transformations. Her search leads her to Jewish mysticism and folklore--and to the golem hidden in their barn. Interspersed chapters relate the tale of Malka's doomed teenage love affair and of Jitka's youth in Prague. Themes of family, love, identity (including LGBTQIA+ identities), betrayal, and redemption blend well with the author's meditations on religion, ancestry, dreams, storytelling, and the significance of names and naming. Hannah is an engaging protagonist, and her interactions with her family members and the ­supernatural beings she encounters guide this layered tale to a suspenseful and satisfying conclusion.
Reviewer: Elissa Gershowitz | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2022

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