“At first, they were just names to me. Karla, Kelly, Marilyn, Jane, Jenny. Karen, Cathy, Angela, Sally, Diana. Sheila.”

This is how Jeffrey Zaslow’s non-fiction work The Girls from Ames begins. 11 names, 11 girls, 11 friends. These are the girls from Ames. I picked up the book in the non-fiction section of the library a few months ago. It was this or a new biography on Emily Dickenson. Emily and I were never great friends, so the Girls won. It looked cute, a book about friendship, and I could use some light reading with Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur coming up. I did not expect the deeply engrossing story of these seemingly ordinary women and their extraordinary friendship.

A man writing about women you say? I won’t even bother with the question. Zaslow himself deals with it in many interviews, so I’ll let him justify his reasons. But what I didn’t know before I read this book was that Zaslow wrote the phenomenal Last Lecture with Randy Pausch. Maybe if I’d known that, I would have gone for Emily.

Zaslow starts off with biographies of the girls, then weaves together the many threads that make up the intricacy of their many faceted friendship. The good girl, the pretty one, the rebel. Everyone woman can find a woman or a snapshot of their life to relate to. Ok fine, now I’ll address the issue of a man writing a book about women and friendship. I would argue it took a man to write this book, because only a man could be naive enough to believe that he could listen objectively and try to map out such a thing as a friendship, and yet still become lost in its beauty. Only a man could parse out these experiences without taking sides or making any of them into sinners or saints. Zaslow portrays them exactly as they are with such detail that you feel you could pick them out in a crowd. The effect is riveting.

The Girls from Ames did not turn out the light reading I thought it would be. It turned out to be exactly what I love about good books, a book that makes me think about my own life. This book made me examine my friendships and what they mean to me. The Girls from Ames is a must read for every woman!  At first they were just names to me: Karla, Kelly, Marilyn, Jane, Jenny. Karen, Cathy, Angela, Sally, Diana. Sheila. By the end, they became my friends too.

Grade: A

I was looking for something powerful, something meaningful, and my friend Devorah told me I had to read To Vanquish the Dragon. That was way back in June. I had been carrying it around ever since, thinking, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll get to it soon.” I really did want to read it, but once I actually had it in my hands, I wasn’t exactly eager to delve into a Holocaust narrative. When it comes to Holocaust books, after The Diary of Anne Frank and Number the Stars readers move on to Eli Weisel’s Night and then get stuck. Children’s book seems “safe” when dealing with such a difficult and intense topic. In this regard, To Vanquish the Dragon is a very special book.

The book is told through the eyes of Pearl Benisch. She was in her late teens during World War II, and she came from an upper class, well educated, religious Jewish family. She describes her experiences from the invasion of Poland to her time in the Displaced Persons camps after the war. She was placed in a variety of camps, from the early work camps to Auschwitz itself, which makes her narrative a whole, complete one. Her focus is on the special young women who were her friends, students, teachers and mentors before the War broke out. She and her friends came from the Beth Jacob Girls Schools, which was an educational movement in the Jewish world just reaching maturity when World War II broke out.

These Beth Jacob girls were taught to care for one another, to have faith in G-d, and to dedicate themselves to helping their community. It is because of this focus that the author is able to share her experiences, and it gives the book a focus that helps the reader make their way through the immense tragedy and tiny triumphs the author experiences. Mrs. Benisch is sharing her experience to tell the stories of those who were lost and those who made survival possible, and this helps the reader continue on through the intense narrative.

This book does not gloss over, nor is it overly graphic. There are some miracles, and while small, they are triumphant. And there is of course senseless tragedy. There are parts of it that seem to become overly detailed and sometimes the author goes on tangents about various people, but it reads like someone telling you a story. You accept the tangents because you know there is something very important in the message. To Vanquish the Dragon is a very special book that bears witness to moments that marked those that experienced them for life. For anyone who wants to understand more about the Holocaust, it is a must read.

Grade: A