{"product_id":"the-strange-inheritance-of-leah-fern-isbn-9781612199863","title":"The Strange Inheritance of Leah Fern","description":"\u003cb\u003e\"[an] imaginative debut...\"\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e - The New York Times \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\"\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe  Strange Inheritance of Leah Fern\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e 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.”\u003cb\u003e - Kelly  Link, author of \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eGet in Trouble\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eThe luminous story of a fiercely lonely young woman's quest to uncover the truth behind her mother’s disappearance . . .\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 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. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 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. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Strange Inheritance of Leah Fern \u003c\/i\u003eis 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.\"[an] imaginative debut...\"\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eThe New York Times \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Chin (\u003ci\u003eLet the Tornado Come\u003c\/i\u003e, 2014) delivers an endearing protagonist whose epic quest ends with a measure of closure and wonder about the magic embedded in the unknown.\" \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e— Booklist, STARRED review\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Readers of Alice Hoffman, Erin Morgenstern, and Sarah Addison Allen will love this character-driven contemporary fantasy.\" — \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eBuzzFeed Books\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Piling revelations atop otherworldly descriptions, the novel wields its uncanny enigmas in an unapologetic fashion...\u003ci\u003eThe Strange Inheritance of Leah Fern\u003c\/i\u003e is an enchanting novel that embraces all of the magic that the world has to offer.\" \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e— Foreword Reviews\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Exquisitely beautiful and eerily wise. Deeply philosophical yet full of magic . . . a work of literary excellence.” \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e— The Southern Literary Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e \"An emotional and cutting new voice in literature demands your attention, so get this book as soon as possible. And give a copy to every reader you know!\"\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003ci\u003e—\u003c\/i\u003e Book Reporter\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Rarely does a novel come along that charms the reader from its very first page. Even rarer is the story that maintains its allure throughout and transports you to places you’ve never been. \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Strange Inheritance of Leah Fern\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e is one of those rarities, a book as magical as the characters it depicts. From a carnival in Alabama to a coven of witches (think Glinda) that travels from place to place, and even to points in an expansive Wiccan spiral, Rita Zoey Chin’s debut novel takes readers on an enchanting emotional journey that will leave you captivated to the very end.” \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e— The Washington Independent Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Chin has a sure hand in showing Leah’s transformation as she processes her childhood neglect and learns to open up...[she] reaches some admirable heights.\" \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"There is much to admire about the author's glittering imagination...traveling with Leah Fern and seeing the world through the eyes of an empath are enjoyable.\"\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e Kirkus Reviews\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Rita Zoey Chin’s new novel is a beautiful, haunting tale...\"\u003cb\u003e \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e CrimeReads\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe  Strange Inheritance of Leah Fern\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e 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.”\u003cb\u003e \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e Kelly  Link, author of \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eGet in Trouble\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"A  book that captures such tenderness and longing, and one where the  rhythm and enchantment of every sentence lures a reader into joining  Leah's search, with plenty of rewards along the way.\" \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e Aimee Bender,  national bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \"To read \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Strange Inheritance of Leah Fern\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eis to be transported into a world so luminescent and full of wonder, so  infused with sorrow and hope and joy and magic, that I wish I could  send a copy to everyone on Earth. Rita Zoey Chin's captivating debut  novel is the best kind of enchantment--transformative and moving and  full of untold delights\u003cb\u003e.\" \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e Catherine Chung, Author of \u003ci\u003eForgotten Country\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Tenth Muse\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"I  was enchanted by this exquisitely written book and the fierce and  lovable Leah Fern. Suffused with magic and longing, the novel casts its  own tender and solitary light, as if etched on a frozen lake under a  full moon. [Its strange glow won't quickly be forgotten.]\"\u003cb\u003e \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e Sharon Guskin, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Forgetting Time \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eRita Zoey Chin\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of the widely praised memoir, \u003ci\u003eLet the Tornado Come\u003c\/i\u003e. She holds an MFA from the University of Maryland and is the recipient of a Katherine Anne Porter Prize, an Academy of American Poets Award, and a Bread Loaf scholarship.  She has taught at Towson University and at Grub Street in Boston. Her work has appeared in \u003ci\u003eGuernica\u003c\/i\u003e, Tin House, and \u003ci\u003eMarie Claire\u003c\/i\u003e. This is her first novel.\u003ci\u003eHilda, South Carolina, 1999; Blazing Calyx Carnival, 1984\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLeah had imagined it for years, the way some girls imagine the ordered rituals of their weddings—the dress, the march, the ordained officiant, the declarations, the dance, the toss, the waves goodbye before crossing that threshold—but here, in her dark iris velvet dress, in her small candlelit apartment in the tiny town of Hilda, South Carolina, where Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor  was moving toward its crescendo and the beat-up ebony grandfather clock she’d lugged home from a roadside sale was gonging through the hours, she was the sole officiator and attendee of this, the grand ceremony of her last breath.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhy not Mozart? This was a celebration, after all, one deserving of a timeless and lofty orchestration. Though this day, April 4, 1999, marked Leah’s twenty-first birthday, it was not her birth she was celebrating. Having lived more than half her life feeling penned in by the impenetrable wires of solitude, weighted by the kind of shapeless helplessness only the abandoned know, she felt powerful now to claim her own death, to schedule it on her own watch, her own grandfather clock as it were. What she didn’t know yet was that her plans were about to be undone by a more powerful force.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere was no one to say goodbye to. She had never made friends in the small town of Hilda, though at first she tried. Shortly after her mother left her there, in the care of the saintly-patient Edward Murphy, who would become, through a peculiar marriage of force and kindness, a father to Leah, she was invited to the house of fellow second-grader Cynthia Lewis, in whose flouncy bedroom Leah unveiled her most prized possession by lifting it from its wrapping in one theatric sweep of the arm: a fox skull she’d found in a field. Her eyes gleamed as light touched the bone, but before she could tell Cynthia and her friends about how beautiful she thought it was, how amazing that its jaw still hinged open and shut, one of the girls said “Ew,” and that was followed by a series of yucks and additional ews, along with tears from Cynthia Lewis, who begged her to “put that dead thing away,” and finally Cynthia’s mother, who suggested Leah go back home and find something else to share with her new friends, something not dead. But death hadn’t scared Leah then, and it didn’t scare her now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe held nothing back on this day, moving through her death rituals with a rapt intensity, not unlike the way Mozart’s quill must have moved through each of his compositions, all the notes now mounting in their urgency alongside the whole of her collected days, which had coalesced here to form a swiftly moving current that would carry her out to an unknown sea. She had initiated the ceremony by lighting the two red candles Edward Murphy had once given her for Christmas. “Smell ’em,” he’d urged excitedly as she pulled them from their wrapping. “Just like cinnamon!” That year she’d given him a new Mozart album to add to his record collection, the same album she was now blasting through her apartment. He had been attempting to branch out from the reliable rock classics to something “more cultured,” as he put it, but now it was completely her own.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen Edward Murphy died and she had to move out, she took the candles from their small dining table, wrapped them in tissue paper, and stowed them on the top shelf of the nearly bare pantry in her new apartment. They had never been lit. But now they flickered dangerously, leaping toward her each time she came wildly gesticulating past, then threatening to go out. She had never moved this way before—all body, flinging herself back and forth through the small space of her living room, her arms darting up erratically, painting invisible pictures in the air, as if to finally answer every question about her sanity that had ever been lodged in her direction by the various small-towners who wondered why, even in the thickest heat of South Carolina summer, she always wore black. Why those heavy combat boots? Perhaps more than anything, people wanted to know “what on God’s green earth” she was doing wearing that “ridiculous” nail-studded belt and collar.  “You’ll poke someone’s eye out with your neck!” said Dr. Hammershire, the local dentist who found his comment so amusing that he repeated it every time he saw her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs she came thrashing again past the candles, a loosened flame herself, even her hair, ink black, shaved close on the right side, spiked longer on the left, seemed to be participating, each barb moving like its own baton, conducting along with Mozart on the fringe of abandon. She couldn’t remember dancing before. She couldn’t remember being so sure of anything.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe rituals, long-planned in a thoughtful order, had begun at 4:44 that morning with the lighting of the two red candles and would continue for one full rotation of the earth, one sunrise and one sunset, twenty-four hours that she would peel each minute from with Herculean intent. She’d chosen this time not only because her birthday fell on the fourth day of the fourth month but also because the number four struck her as whole—four chambers of the heart, four ventricles of the brain, four elements, four seasons, four winds, four principal phases of the moon—and she wanted to close her life feeling like she, too, was whole.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAfter lighting the ceremonial candles, Leah recited aloud Mary Oliver’s “Sleeping in the Forest,” which Edward Murphy had first read to her when she was a child. “Your mama was nuts about Mary Oliver,” he’d told her. “She was carrying this beat-up old book of hers in her purse when we met.” It had been almost fifteen years since Leah had heard her mother’s voice, though she could still conjure it from fifteen birthdays before, her sixth birthday, the last one she would spend with her mother.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e*****\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was April 4, 1984, in the Alabama fields of the Blazing Calyx Carnival, and Leah had just blown out the six candles adorning a chocolate-covered mound of fried dough. Her wish was the same wish she wished each time she saw the first star appear in the sky: to meet a real live elephant. “Did you wish for elephants again?” her mother asked, tapping her cigarette against the rim of the ashtray. Leah plunged her fingers into the melted chocolate. She didn’t answer because Perilous Paul had told her that you should never tell a wish if you want it to come true. Her mother reached across their little fold-up table and stroked Leah’s cheek. Her eyes went shiny as they sometimes did when she felt what she called “a little love spell” coming on. “When you were born,” she said, “right here, in this very trailer, I had no idea what to call you. You were such a sensitive baby. I could tell right away you were different.” Leah watched the tip of her mother’s cigarette glow orange as she pressed it between her lips and was mesmerized by how the cigarette changed before her eyes, just like one of her mother’s magic tricks. “You were always looking around with those big eyes of yours as if you already knew everything there was to know, secret things. And you never wanted to sleep. That summer, when you were only a few months old, you’d stay up all night just looking, not making a sound. And I thought of a legend I once read about, how if you find the seed of a fern in bloom on a midsummer night, you get special powers.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Powers?” Leah asked, pushing a handful of dough into her mouth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“You become invisible, and then only will-o’-the-wisps can see you.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Will-o’-the-wisps?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeannie nodded slowly for emphasis. “Yep, that’s right. Will-o’-the-wisps. Spirits made of light. And when you find them, they lead you to hidden treasures that no one else can see.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“What kind of treasures?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I don’t know,” said Jeannie, pulling hard enough on her cigarette to make it crackle. Her voice crackled, too, when she exhaled. “You’ll have to tell me when you find the seed.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLeah smiled. “I’ll take you with me,” she said, “to the treasure.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Nah, I’ll always be just a person,” she said pensively, tapping her ash and looking out at a distance Leah couldn’t see. “But you, Miss Fern, are different. That’s why you’re not named after a person. You’re named after magic.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Did your mama name you Jeannie Starr because she knew you’d be a magic star?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLeah’s mother stubbed her cigarette out in a small orange ashtray. “My mama never knew anything about me.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Why not?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe reached for Leah’s face again but stopped midway, as suddenly as if something had bitten her hand. “You just eat your sweets, okay? That was a long, long time ago.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLeah thought for a moment. “Do I have a dad?” she finally asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLeah’s mother laughed the kind of laugh that isn’t really a laugh. “Ah, your daddy,” she said, “could have been any one of a few handsome cowboys.”","brand":"Melville House","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305062748389,"sku":"NP9781612199863","price":17.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781612199863.jpg?v=1767741695","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-strange-inheritance-of-leah-fern-isbn-9781612199863","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}