Showing results for "Ballet" in Women's Fiction

1941, Lodz. When nineteen-year-old Jewish ballerina Eleonore Kantor arrives at the Lodz ghetto, she quickly learns how easy it is to break a person’s spirit. After the Nazis murder her mother before her eyes, she is left with nothing but a pair of ballet slippers. Painstakingly hand-stitched by her mother, they were a gift to remind Eleonore to continue pursuing her dream of becoming a ballerina, no matter what. Determined to find light even in the darkest of places, Eleonore joins the ghetto resistance to open a secret ballet studio for the children.

I have to escape. My mother is driving me crazy. For Indigo Stevens, ballet classes at Miss Roberta’s ballet studio offer the stability and structure that are missing from her crazy home life. At almost 16, she hopes this is the year she will be accepted into the New York School of Ballet so she can start her real life. First she must prove she’s ready, and that means ignoring Jesse Sanders – the cute boy with dimples who is definitely at the top of Miss Roberta’s List of Forbidden Things for Dancers. But Jesse is the least of Indigo’s concerns.

The Bailey family - Frank, Liliane, and their children Shannon, Tommy, and Grace - find their lives increasingly intertwined with their charismatic parish priest, Father Dale. As Liliane grapples with past trauma and seeks validation through her relationship with Father Dale, Frank struggles with guilt from his work in the military-industrial complex, clinging to Catholic doctrine as a form of redemption.