Yara by Tamara Faith Berger
CBC Books | Posted: August 22, 2023 5:22 PM | Last Updated: August 22, 2023
A coming-of-age story about a young woman navigating complex relationships.
Distraught that her teenage daughter is in love with a woman a decade older, Yara's mother sends Yara away from their home in Brazil on a Birthright trip to Israel for Jewish youth. Freed from her increasingly controlling and jealous girlfriend, Yara is determined to forge her own path and follow her desires.
But Birthright takes a debaucherous turn, and Yara flees Israel for Toronto, where she begins to see her relationship in the new, uncertain light of sexual abuse; then California, where she plays with the line between erotic film and real life.
As Yara wanders, she tries to keep her head above water, connecting the dots between the lands in which she finds herself, the places she has been, and the places she is headed. (From Coach House Books)