Early ReviewersLeah Hager Cohen

A tale of two girls—one living in a parable, the other in Manhattan

Ani, journeying across a great distance accompanied by a stolen kitten, meets many people along her way, but her encounters only convince her that she is meant to keep searching. Annamae, journeying from childhood to young adulthood alongside her mother, older brother, and the denizens of her Manhattan neighborhood, never outgrows her yearning for a friend she cannot describe. From their different worlds, Ani and Annamae reach across the divide, perhaps to discover—or perhaps to create—each other.

Told in two mirrored narratives that culminate in a new beginning, To & Fro unleashes the wonders and mysteries of childhood in a profound exploration of identity, spirituality, and community.

“Leah Hager Cohen’s magnificent turn-and-read novel To & Fro is a tour de force peek into the wilds and wounds of childhood.” —Foreword Reviews (starred review)

“To & Fro is a luminous, charming, and utterly original novel filled with pleasures and provocations at every turn. Through some strange alchemy, Cohen has combined character-driven storytelling with brilliant philosophical forays into what it feels like to decipher the world, honor its mysteries, and stay open to its aches and gifts.” —Elizabeth Graver, author of Kantika

“Cohen’s writing is a wonder. Here are worlds nested inside worlds, each unfolding like a delicate paper staircase leading to destinations unknown. To & Fro is a gorgeous, captivating riddle of a book.” —Rachel Kadish, author of The Weight of Ink

As children, Ava and her brother Fred were raised in a “free” environment. Their parents, progressive educators and followers of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, believed children developed best without formal instruction or societal contraints. This, despite the fact that Fred was a child who clearly might have benefited from some kind of intervention. When the book opens, Ava, 32, has learned that her brother, 30, is being held in a county jail in upstate New York, alleged to have abducted a young boy and taken him into the woods. After several days’ search, the boy is found dead. Fred has always been different. If he’d ever been clinically evaluated, he might well have been given a diagnosis on the autism spectrum, but his parents didn’t believe in labeling or pathologizing human behavior, and never took him to a specialist. Now Ava feels impelled to try to piece together the story of what actually happened between the boy and Fred, convinced that she, and she alone, will be able to explain her brother in a way that allows the rest of the world to regard him with sympathy. No Book but the World is about fathoming the unfathomable. It asks what obligation we have to reach out to someone who is difficult to love, or to try to understand the motivations behind another’s actions, and what means we have for doing so. It asks whether freedom is always desirable. And it challenges the idea that facts are our best tools for comprehending one another, proposing our emotions and imaginations might take us further.

A short, concise book in favor of honoring doubt and admitting when the answer is: I don’t know. In a tight, enlightening narrative, Leah Hager Cohen explores why, so often, we attempt to hide our ignorance, and why, in so many different areas, we would be better off coming clean. Weaving entertaining, anecdotal reporting with eye-opening research, she considers both the ramifications of and alternatives to this ubiquitous habit in arenas as varied as education, finance, medicine, politics, warfare, trial courts, and climate change. But it’s more than just encouraging readers to confess their ignorance—Cohen proposes that we have much to gain by embracing uncertainty. Three little words can in fact liberate and empower, and increase the possibilities for true communication. So much becomes possible when we honor doubt.

In the tradition of The Memory Keeper's Daughter, a gripping, generous, and provocative novel chronicling the grief that follows the death of a newborn-and that leads to a family's emotional reawakening. It begins with loss. John and Ricky Ryrie are stricken by the death of their third child, only fifty-seven hours after his birth. Struggling to regain a semblance of normalcy, they find themselves pretending not only that little has changed, but that nothing was wrong before this baby came so briefly into their lives. Yet in the aftermath of his death, long-suppressed uncertainties about their relationship come roiling to the surface. A dreadful secret emerges concerning what Ricky knew about her pregnancy and concealed from everyone, even John. And the couple's two older children, grappling with the tensions around them, begin to act out in exquisitely, perhaps courageously, idiosyncratic ways. Ultimately, though, the grief that was initially so isolating brings the four family members to connect powerfully with the sadness and burdens of others- to the grief that is part of every human life and that carries within it the ability to draw us together. And in the end, Ricky and John's marriage is stronger for the transformation their grief has allowed. Moving, psychologically acute, and gorgeously written, The Grief of Others is Leah Hager Cohen at the height of her talent in what is sure to be her breakout book, one that forces readers to ask themselves: What would I have done? The Grief of Others exposes the paradox that facing tragedy together can in fact awaken us to our better selves and take us from fear to a place of hope and optimism.