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OLDER FICTION
Savit, Gavriel

The Way Back

368 pp. | Knopf | November, 2020 | Trade ISBN 978-1-98489-462-5 $18.99 | Library ISBN 978-1-9848-9463-2 $20.99 | Ebook ISBN 978-1-9848-9464-9 $10.99
(2) YA In this dark fantasy set in a nineteenth-century shtetl in Eastern Europe, grieving teens Bluma (who's lost her grandmother) and Yehuda Leib (who found and lost his absent father in the same moment) travel to the Far Country and match wits with demons and other figures drawn from Jewish folklore, including the Angel of Death. Narrated with a storyteller's cadence ("And this is how it came to pass that there, beneath her bed, Bluma descended into the sleep of the grieving under the watchful gaze of her own unblinking eyes"), the winding tale is full of creepy characters and intriguing magical objects, as the protagonists are confronted with choices that force them to face mortality. Savit (Anna and the Swallow Man, rev. 1/16) crafts an absorbing fantasy and gives teens plenty to contemplate about life, love, storytelling, and family.
Reviewer: Shoshana Flax | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2020

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