The Keys to Fanny

I’m thirteen today, and I wish I could turn time all the way back to my twelfth birthday…before things began to change.

A young girl’s dream takes her further than she ever imagined in Sally Wahl Constain’s epic debut novel, The Keys to Fanny. An insightful glimpse into a time when women were denied even the most basic education, its strong characters will inspire audiences long after the last page is finished.

When her mother dies, thirteen-year-old Fanny is unceremoniously placed in charge of the household until her father remarries. When he does, however, it is to a woman whose scheming results in Fanny’s engagement to her cruel step-cousin.

Devastated at the thought of her upcoming marriage, Fanny’s Aunt Freda offers her secret passage to America. Fanny now faces the most important choice of her life: flee the only home she’s ever known and risk never seeing her family again, or marry a boy she despises.

Forbidden to learn how to read and write in her village, a Jewish shtetl near Kiev, Fanny’s dream of earning an education seems to lie in escaping to America.

But as she embarks on a journey of a lifetime, Fanny wonders: Will her dream ever really come true?