THE BELIEF IN ANGELS by J. Dylan Yates is one of those books that grabs on to your soul and causes you to fully let go of your surroundings in order to take a trip into someone else's world. It is full of tragedy and marked with death, however, there is victory in surviving. There is life in believing, whether that belief is in angles or in hope for the future.
Jules Finn is a girl growing up in the seventies, to parents who truly don't deserve the blessing of children. She and her brothers are abused and neglected more times than anyone should have to deal with, yet they stay, because they don't want to be separated. This masterpiece also shows the life of Jules's grandfather, Samuel. He grew up in the Ukraine in the 1920s and lived through some of the most terrifying years a Jew in Europe could live through. The two stories at first seem worlds apart, but as you continue this heart wrenching journey, you begin to see they are not so different after all.
THE BELIEF IN ANGELS is so eloquently written, it pulls and pushes you through dark things, and yet you never look back, I wished only to find out more. J. Dylan Yates created a character to believe in, a character to fight for. She really makes her characters come to life in this gruesome coming of age story. She creates a world of tragedy and pores light in through the smallest things. THE BELIEF IN ANGELS reminds us why we keep pushing, why we never give up, and why we must always survive.
Growing up in her parentsβ crazy hippie household on a tiny
island off the coast of Boston, Julesβs 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 brotherβa blow from which Jules may never fully recover.
Julesβ 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 and the Majdanek Death
Campβbut whose survival came at a price thatβs haunted him
for years.
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