To & Fro is a strangely interesting book in two parts. One, marked "To", is narrated by Ani, who is about twelve years old as she goes on a sort of quest, searching for she is not sure what. The other part, "Fro", is told in third person about Annamae as she grows from about four years until she turns twelve. But the book promises "two beginnings with nary an end" and when the writing is finished we realize each girl knows she is just starting out.

I wondered if such a pair of stories could keep this 80 year old man interested, but 30 pages in into each tale, I was hooked by Cohen’s novel, and already looking up what else she has written.

Annamae lives in a three-story but modest apartment in New York City with her mother and older brother, in the current day.
Ani has lost her family and leaves her halfway housing in an unnamed land at a pre-modern time that sometimes sounds make-believe, and at other times is very real.

Both girls make up stories, have stories playing in their heads, sometimes recall what happened when they were younger, and sometimes are confused about their pasts. Both are bright, both are curious and independent. Their inner lives are as interesting as what happens to them in their worlds.

Slowly, things are told that connect one with the other in some sort of way, like a book, a necklace, a shared sense of longing.

For each, they never fall into danger. None of the things that books often tell about. Each is cared for and protected on their two different journeys by the people they meet, which is unusual for a contemporary book, but which in a way is refreshing and which serves each of their stories.

Since each story was as interesting as the other, I mostly read twenty pages or so of Ani, then flipped to Annamae, going back and forth until I could read the last few pages about each at the end. That was the most satisfying way for me to follow their stories. ( )

Maybe stories don’t make things happen, but maybe through stories we find we are not alone.
from To & Fro by Leah Hager Cohen

Ani follows a man off “to and fro,” a journey in which she encounters different groups and new insights. Her first journey took place after she and her mother were exiled from their home in the middle of winter, during which Ani’s mother died.

Ani has a brown book, although she cannot read. A kitten she calls Company that she struggles to keep alive. A scroll in a bottle on a necklace.

Life is walking and arriving and leave-taking, each a place of learning and growth, each a place of gift receiving.

Turn the book around, and there is another story.

The psychologist diagnosed Oppositional defiant disorder. The psychotherapist mentioned executive function disorder. The neuropsychologist proclaimed Annamae had a “stellar brain.”

Annamae thought differently, deeply, and it made her lonely. She knew people could never understand each other, that words failed, language was a net through which words spilled “like pennies through the holes.” She would not do her creative writing assignment and was posed to fail the class. No one saw what she saw, the deadly seriousness of one’s complete control over the characters one created. She saw that letters had colors and personalities, and she recognized the stories that Rav Harriet told about alef-bet and the creation of the world.

She had a brown notebook called Company in which she wrote and drew, but lost it. She had a message in a bottle necklace, but it disappeared.

Fantasy or reality, each story is mesmerizing, taking one into an unforgettable and unique character’s deepest thoughts as she journeys through life. When you are finished reading both, you will want to turn the book again and keep reading, realizing how much more there is to discover.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book. ( )