Neshama by Marcella Pixley; Somerville, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press; (c) 2025; ISBN 9781536-236613; 368 pages; $18.99; Publication Date: May 13, 2025.
SAN DIEGO — This novel, written completely in verse, tells of a girl in middle school who sees ghosts, prompting her classmates to tease and taunt her and her parents to disbelieve her. But Anna actually does see them.
After a fight with her parents, she travels miles away to Gloucester, Massachusetts, where her bubbe lives. She will spend Shabbat with her grandmother before returning to school where she knows the mean girls await. At grandma’s home, she encounters the ghost of Ruthie, her father’s sister who drowned when a neighbor boy, Jerome, chased her off a dock.
The novel tells of Ruthie asking Anna for permission to cohabit her body, so she can feel once again what living was like. Anna agrees. When she returns to school, at Ruthie’s urging, she rebukes Eden, the ringleader of the mean girls. But she also sees hovering by Eden two ghosts, whom she learns are Eden’s little brother, who died at a young age, and her beloved grandfather.
This is a story of compassion of loss and reconciliation. With the help of Ruthie’s insight, Anna comes to understand her father’s deep sorrow, Eden’s anger, and Jerome’s remorse.
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World.