Sign-In
Cart
Leah
Hardcover
Publisher Price: $30.99
Please select the version of book you would like to purchase.
ISBN10: 1038356830
ISBN13: 9781038356833
Publisher: FriesenPress
Published: Dec 12 2025
Pages: 168
Weight: 0.65
Height: 0.50 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
ISBN13: 9781038356833
Publisher: FriesenPress
Published: Dec 12 2025
Pages: 168
Weight: 0.65
Height: 0.50 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
What happens when a family's secret reveals a broader story of Jewish survival and loss?
In Leah, a forgotten chapter of Toronto's Jewish immigrant history comes to life. Nineteen-year-old Leah Granatstein arrived in Canada from Poland in the 1920s, seeking safety and new opportunities. But Leah's strong independence and struggles with mental health set her apart in a community still dealing with tradition, poverty, and prejudice. When her behaviour was seen as unacceptable, she was placed in an asylum and eventually deported back to Poland.
Her disappearance reflects more than a family tragedy: it sheds light on the challenges faced by Jewish immigrants in preserving their culture and faith in a city marked by both opportunity and discrimination; it foreshadows the devastation faced by European Jewry during the Holocaust; and it raises enduring questions about how families navigate differences, secrecy, and shame. Drawing on archival records, family testimony, and historically rooted storytelling, Leah explores the intersections of Jewish culture, Canadian immigration, and the misunderstood realities of mental illness in the early twentieth century.
In Leah, a forgotten chapter of Toronto's Jewish immigrant history comes to life. Nineteen-year-old Leah Granatstein arrived in Canada from Poland in the 1920s, seeking safety and new opportunities. But Leah's strong independence and struggles with mental health set her apart in a community still dealing with tradition, poverty, and prejudice. When her behaviour was seen as unacceptable, she was placed in an asylum and eventually deported back to Poland.
Her disappearance reflects more than a family tragedy: it sheds light on the challenges faced by Jewish immigrants in preserving their culture and faith in a city marked by both opportunity and discrimination; it foreshadows the devastation faced by European Jewry during the Holocaust; and it raises enduring questions about how families navigate differences, secrecy, and shame. Drawing on archival records, family testimony, and historically rooted storytelling, Leah explores the intersections of Jewish culture, Canadian immigration, and the misunderstood realities of mental illness in the early twentieth century.
Also in
General Fiction
Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories (Loa #344): The Voice at the Back Door / The Light in the Piazza / Knights and Dragons / Stories
Spencer, Elizabeth
Hardcover
$38.00
Anniversaries, Volume 2: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, April 1968-August 1968
Johnson, Uwe
Paperback
From $14.99
Philip Roth: Novels 1973-1977 (Loa #165): The Great American Novel / My Life as a Man / The Professor of Desire
Roth, Philip
Hardcover
From $17.99
Selected Writings: Robert Musil: Young Torless, Three Women, the Perfecting of a Love, and Other Writings
Musil, Robert
Agee, Joel
Paperback
$79.43
Before Gatsby: The First Twenty-Six Stories
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Bruccoli, Matthew J.
Baughman, Judith
Paperback
$50.74