The Waiting Room by Leah Kaminsky

Today has been the best day! We are in the homestretch of the school year and literally dragging ourselves towards the finish line (largely because my kids thought it would be great fun to cram in a little last-minute croup — who does that?!) Most of this week has been spent driving from one special event to the next but today, we got to stay put in one spot and tick off Class Presentation 2 & 3 of 4 with minimal drama even though it was 35 degrees again (that’s 95 Fahrenheit for those playing along at home.) My 2YO sat coated in sunblock and sweat on a bone-dry mound of dirt pushing around his Matchbox cars all afternoon, and though I’ll probably have to bury the white t-shirt he was wearing, it was worth the sacrifice to actually see an entire assembly, not least because my 7YO took out the academic award for his class. I don’t normally crow about my kids’ achievements but this particular child was still struggling to recognize his own name halfway through kindergarten so I’m over the moon at how much he’s progressed in Year One!

And then I came home to book mail — hooray!

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard lots of buzz about The Waiting Room and I’m pleased to share that Leah will be appearing on the blog in early 2016. But I’m even more pleased that I now have my very own copy of her book to plough through in the interim! I think there are two camps of stay-at-home parents: ones who dread school holidays and ones who relish them, and I am definitely the latter. Yes, it means tools-down for me writing-wise, but the flip side is I get to read a ton!

Here’s the blurb for The Waiting Room:

Dina is a family doctor living in the melting-pot city of Haifa, Israel. Born in Australia in a Jewish enclave of Melbourne to Holocaust survivors, Dina has left behind a childhood marred by misery and the tragedies of the past to build a new life for herself in the Promised Land.

After starting a family of her own, she finds her life falling apart beneath the demands of her eccentric patients, a marriage starting to fray, the ever-present threat of terrorist attack and the ghost of her mother, haunting her with memories that Dina would prefer to leave on the other side of the world.

Leah Kaminsky plumbs the depths of her characters’ lives, both the sweet and the heart-wrenching, reaching back in a single climactic day through six decades and across three continents to uncover a truth that could save Dina’s sanity — and her life.

And here’s the Prologue:

Mother cuts my nails. The clippings fall into her palm and she places them on a tissue, careful not to drop any onto the floor. She folds the tissue in half, then in half again and walks slowly over to the fireplace. She stands two dead matches upright on either side of the hearth, taking her time, so they will not fall.

“Now, throw the tissue into the flames,” she says. “Do not spill a nail or you will have to come back after you are dead. You will roam the earth searching for every nail clipping you have ever lost. You will need to gather up each one, or else you will never rest in the next world.” Mother tells me I’m a good girl.

I watch the tissue burn.

Thanks, Leah — I can’t wait to start reading this. T-minus 6 days!