The Strange Inheritance of Leah Fern
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4.4 • 7 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
"[an] imaginative debut..." - The New York Times
"The Strange Inheritance of Leah Fern is a bittersweet and achingly tender coming of age novel. Like V. E. Schwab and Audrey Niffenegger, Rita Zoey Chin is an expert guide to that territory in which magic, loss, and possibility change not only the characters but the reader, too.” - Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble
The luminous story of a fiercely lonely young woman's quest to uncover the truth behind her mother’s disappearance . . .
When 6-year-old empath Leah Fern—once “The Youngest and Very Best Fortune Teller in the World”—is abandoned by her beautiful magician mother, she is consumed with longing for her mother's return.
Until something bizarre happens: On her 21st birthday Leah receives an inheritance from someone she doesn’t even know, and finds herself launched on a journey of magical discovery. It's a voyage that will spiral across the United States, Canada, into the Arctic Circle and beyond—and help her make her own life whole by piecing together the mystery surrounding her mother’s disappearance.
The Strange Inheritance of Leah Fern is an enchanting novel about the transcendent power of the imagination, the magic at the threshold of past and present, and the will it takes to love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Chin's whimsical if uneven debut novel (after the memoir Let the Tornado Come), a young woman gets an unexpected inheritance from a neighbor. Leah Fern, 21, receives a large sum of cash from the estate of photographer Essie East, along with Essie's ashes. In a letter, Essie instructs Leah where to scatter her remains and promises information on the whereabouts of Leah's mother, Jeannie Starr, a carnival magician who abandoned Leah at age six. As Leah recovers additional letters from Essie on a trail that leads across the U.S. and Canada, Essie's life story and her relationships with four other artists—particularly her complicated ties to a jeweler and blacksmith—gradually come into focus. The plot is a bit hackneyed and the final twist involving Jeannie predictable, but Chin has a sure hand in showing Leah's transformation as she processes her childhood neglect and learns to open up. "Have the courage to love," writes Essie in one of her letters, prompting Leah to forge bonds with those she meets along the way, including the proprietor of an animal sanctuary and a waitress who helps Leah locate an important landmark. Though this often feels well-worn, Chin reaches some admirable heights.
Customer Reviews
Love this book
Took a minute to get into this book, but stick it out, trust me. It’s so good! Very heartfelt and bittersweet. The writing was beautiful and captivating to where you felt like you were right there with the characters. I couldn’t put it down :) now I wish it didn’t end.