Flamboyánt

by Elizabeth Swados

Chana Landau reluctantly accepts a teaching position at Manhattan's Harvey Milk High School to help finance her upcoming wedding. When she begins her job, Chana leaves the protection of her familiar, safe world - a traditional Orthodox Jewish enclave in Brooklyn - for a school that embodies everything she has been forbidden to experience. In a hostile classroom filled with sexually "different" teens, street kids, and drug addicts, Chana's one support is Flamboyant. Flamboyant is a fifteen-year-old prostitute and an accomplished writer, who charms Chana by telling her that she is half-Jewish and that her given name is Sarah. But when appearances prove to be deceptive, the inexperienced teacher must confront a profound crisis in her faith in God and the principles of her religion.