Praise for The Weight of the Sky 

The beauty of the Israeli landscape is painted in carefully crafted poetry, but the tension and tentativeness of today's Israel is never far from the surface. Sarah learns about herself through the eyes of a foreign culture where she can clearly see the social layers and determine for herself where she chooses to fit in. By working the earth of her ancestors, Sarah carefully cultivates a new identity for herself, returning as a fully grown individual, comfortable with who she has become.                 
— Michele Winship, Asst. Prof., Capital Univ., Columbus, OH 

At her parents’ urging, she takes off for a summer in Israel, leaving behind the taunts of the cheerleading gang, school lunches of prohibited pork chops and the pressures of thinking about college. Soon after she arrives, she sits on the balcony of her cousin’s Jerusalem apartment, takes in the fragrant jasmine and begins to feel at peace, even as she’s nervous about this adventure. As she feels the breath of the city and its heartbeat, she at once knows she is part of the humming she hears.

On kibbutz, her memories of not being asked to dance at school events are far away. She trades in her overstuffed suitcase for used work clothes and joins the other volunteers in the fields and in after-work outings. For the first time, she feels she is not invisible and finds her voice, as though she is “awakening/ from a deep sleep/ of sixteen years.” She falls in love with an Israeli soldier, experiences the tragic death of another and is moved immeasurably by this land of “beautiful dreams/and nightmares.”

The title is drawn from a moment when she’s floating on her back on Lake Kinneret, looking up at the stars, feeling “the weight of the sky” pressing down on her with heavenly strength.

Although this is a book intended for teens, adults will also appreciate its charm and emotional reality. Sandell’s descriptions of Israel are finely rendered; many readers will remember their first wide-eyed trips to Israel in her telling. When asked in an interview about her choice of writing style, Sandell explains that Sarah’s voice came to her in this form. When she tried moving the lines around to make the novel read like prose, it didn’t work.

By day, Sandell is a book editor at Scholastic, and she writes at night and on weekends in her Upper West Side apartment. She says that one of the challenges in writing for teenagers is that they have so many distractions in their young lives. “Capturing a voice that rings true to a teenager is hard to do and really important. You have to capture situations that are interesting and also universal. That’s why so many books have similar themes of loneliness, isolation, feelings of not fitting in,” she says, adding that it’s also an exciting age group in that kids are open to exploring different ideas and different forms.

Although she has no teenagers in her own life, she says that she remembers her own experience powerfully, and the sense of loneliness she felt in her teens “is still always with me in some ways.” The novel is not autobiographical per se, but has many parallels to Sandell’s life: growing up in a small town with few Jews and being very aware of her identity, spending a summer during college in Israel on a kibbutz and falling in love with the country. After graduating from college, she moved to Jerusalem and worked at The Jerusalem Report magazine.

Now 28 and married to an Israeli, Jewish Week Staff Writer Liel Leibovitz, she explains that questions about her own Jewish identity and her relationship to Israel spurred her to write this novel.
— Sandee Brawarsky - Jewish Week Book Critic 

There were a lot of surprises for me in this novel. First, I generally do not like lyrical novels — I like my novels written in complete sentences and keep poetry on an entirely separate shelf. I actually received Weight by accident — thank heavens! — and found that Sarah’s story is so engaging, that every aspect of her summer so quietly enthralling, that the format was fine. What really grabbed me though were the many quiet little dramas that Sarah engages in as she meets distant relatives, tries to understand the strangeness of her surroundings (she’s from Pennsylvania) and finds herself in a couple of romances along the way. Sandell does an excellent job of not shying away from the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict either. While this is certainly not a book about an American caught up in international intrigue, Sarah does have her own thoughts about carrying a gun for your country and finds herself surprised on more than one occasion by the armed conflict reality that she ends up living in. In more ways than one, this is a novel about growing up, and about realizing that there is more to life than how you look in you band uniform back home.

I have not seen many novels that tackle the subject of mainstream religion for teens, or the need to fit in from a perspective like Sarah’s. This is not a religious book, really, which might seem odd to say as it is about a Jewish girl in Israel, but there is no dogma here — no proselytizing about the miracle of turning the deserts green. It’s mostly about the comfort you find surrounded by people who are just like you, on the smaller levels, like people who don’t question what you’re going to eat for lunch in the school cafeteria. And because it is about that most universal of needs — belonging — it has a very wide ranging appeal. (There is a night and day difference between this book and The Queen of Cool, but on some fundamental levels they are remarkably about the same thing, which is the sort of literary synergy that I just love.) The Weight of the Sky should be appreciated on many levels, but most significantly as a book about belonging in the larger world and giving yourself up to the longings you feel in your heart. It’s lovely reading and wholly and completely a book that belongs within the current times.

After a brief visit in Jerusalem with relatives, Sarah heads to the kibbutz, where she will spend the remainder of the summer.  Shy and withdrawn, it takes a bit of courage for Sarah to find her place in the group of kibbutz residents and volunteers.  Once she begins working in the fields, sharing meals with the others, and doing some exploring, Sarah finds she is more at home here than back in Pennsylvania.  The land is beautiful and rich with her history and religion.  But underneath the beauty is a violence between people that Sarah just can't quite understand.

Lisa Ann Sandell uses verse to take readers on this self-discovery type journey with Sarah.  I could sense her appreciation and inspiration, yet also feel her confusion as she spends time exploring her native land and heritage. Thoughtful readers will find this a welcome addition to any library shelf.

Sandell also powerfully describes Sarah’s coming of age—her first kiss, her first boyfriend, the first time she feels accepted by the group of older teens and early-twenty-somethings who work on the kibbutz. Sarah is an articulate narrator, mature enough to recognize how young she is, and how much she has yet to learn, and how she’s not ready to have sex yet….

I read The Weight of the Sky in two ways: as my former teenage self, who would’ve loved it unabashedly, and as a slightly jaded (though trying not to be) adult reader. Both the teenage reader and the adult reader in me enjoyed the book very much. The adult side, however, recognized that a novel in verse is not for every reader, and I imagine young adults might be more open-minded than some adult readers to a novel in poetry. Very few poetry books, novels or not, are published by large adult publishing houses, who take as their credo that poetry simply does not sell. It’s a credit to both young adult publishers, and young adult readers, that they seem to be more open to the poetic form. Credit is due to writers who take risks as well, and who are willing to write narrative free verse, a form that gives so much weight to individual words that it can seem cloying or overdone. But Sandell’s writing never hits a false note. It’s honest and sincere, and The Weight of the Sky should be required reading for any young woman going to Israel for the first time, or any adult reader who would love to revisit that early life-altering experience.

Lisa Ann Sandell's debut novel The Weight of the Sky is powerful in its simplicity. What is more amazing is that the entire story is written in verse, no small feat by any means! The characters are very much alive as are the settings, both in the flashbacks in Pennsylvania and in Israel.

The narrative focuses on a simple plot involving an insecure sixteen -year-old Sarah, the only Jew in her class in Pennsylvania, who is sent to violence-torn Israel for a summer vacation. Gradually, she falls in love with the country, despite the brutality, the shootings in the streets and bombs going off on buses that that are reported daily news broadcasts. Lior and Nadaf, two handsome soldiers help her on the road from insecure adolescence to maturity. Harsh life on Kibbutz Kfar Avivim makes her want to return to her cozy home in Pennsylvania, but the beauty surrounding her, the smells, the sounds, and the friendships, override her homesickness.

Sandell's writing can be compared to a beautiful painting with all the attributes of a master painter. She brings tears to your eyes with the contrast of so much beauty and yet so much sadness.

The Weight of the Sky should not be limited to the Young Adult audience. Everyone should read and enjoy the beautiful free verse written by such a talented author.