Shirley Ann Newman

Miss Day's Dismay! a Novel Shirley Ann Newman

Corinne Drayer is the main character is Miss Day?s Dismay! who later changes her name to one she perceives as more Anglican. As a young adolescent school girl, Corinne grows terrified when her history teacher depicts to her class a graphic account of the Holocaust. The only Jewish child in the class, she relates to these horrific events on a personal level, convinced these terrors will one day occur in America. However, she declines to share these concerns with her non-Jewish fellow students. Nor does she reveal her anguished fears with her parents. Corinne does however, confide her emotional turmoil to a diary she keeps in secret. Entwined in this theme is the ancient religious belief of reincarnation. Differing from other forms of Jewish mysticism, unfolded here is a concept by the famous sage Isaac Luria who averred that animals too have souls and a human may become endowed with the soul of an animal or vice versa.