Willa & Hesper by Amy Feltman is that rare book, for me, that kept me invested and interested from the beginning to the end.

The story of Willa and Hesper, as well as the stories of Willa and Hesper, unfold almost casually even when they are traumatic. I found this to be very effective since trauma seems almost casual while it is happening and it is in the aftermath, whether moments, weeks, or years, when the trauma really takes on a larger than life feel. There is shock, there is anger and sadness, but more than anything there is the will to survive, to have a life worth living. We often think this life is because of what happens to us but quite often it is in spite of what happens to us. Feltman captures both senses here.

Willa and Hesper, as characters, are like most people we know. There are things to love about them, things to hate, but mostly they are good people trying their best. This makes them, even at their least likable, still empathy-inducing characters. You want them to find whatever it is they need to be happy, or at least not to be unhappy.

The lines between personal, familial, and community histories are permeable and speak to one another. Who are we? Why are we? To what extent does our ethnic/religious history make us who we are? To what extent do the different such histories we all have share, at their cores, a common sense of survival in the face of seemingly insurmountable evil? Which brings this story from the personal and historical journey into the very real world of present day evil, America in the age of Trump.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys beautiful prose, flawed but likable characters, and the intersection of personal, familial, and cultural histories with current events.

Reviewed from a copy made available through Goodreads' First Reads. ( )

There is such a pretty quality to the writing in this one, and not just in the pretty moments, it’s in the hurt and the vulnerability, too; the specific details, the descriptive way emotions are expressed, the intellect behind it, I was continually impressed.

I very much liked the structure, seeing these young women together, falling in love, and also getting to know them on their own as individuals with wisps of their romance still threaded in here and there even when they didn’t share scenes. I love a love story, and I love stories of women of any age figuring things out, coming into their own, so Willa and Hesper was kind of ideal in that it delivered both.

Religion isn’t really present in my life, yet I found it really interesting to read about Willa’s faith, reconciling it with her sexuality, questioning whether she’s Jewish enough, and how the Holocaust becomes so much more immediate for her in light of a violation against herself, and a particular election, it’s much more challenging for her to maintain that historical distance from it that most lean on so willingly for peace of mind and sense of safety in the present.

Meanwhile, Hesper, in a perpetual struggle with depression, travels with her family to Georgia (the country), in search of their grandfather’s roots. It reminded me a little of that season of Transparent (minus a trans character) where the family goes to Israel, only Hesper’s journey is less sex-obsessed, more coherently plotted and consistently more tender than any given episode of Transparent.

As the ending neared, I wasn’t sure it was what I wanted, but then, with the final few words, it just all of a sudden felt right.

I received this book through a Goodreads giveaway. ( )