Jam has been enrolled by her parents in The Wooden Barn, a school in rural Vermont for troubled and disturbed teens, or as Jam puts it, "kids with issues". She is promptly chosen to participate in a Special Topics English class taught by Mrs. Quenell, an elderly teacher who is retiring after the current semester. The class concentrates on one author, a different one each semester. This session it's Sylvia Plath, author of The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel about the journey through severe depression for those who lived in the mid 20th century, and collections of poetry. Each student is given an antique leather journal with instructions to write in it twice a week until the class ends. The journals have some kind of special power that transports each student back into their past to confront their own individual issues. They are also commissioned to take care of and watch out for each other throughout the semester. This is a book about existing in the present, but living in the past. It's about accepting things that happened that you cannot change and letting things go when you have to. Learning to put the past firmly in the past and to look forward with anticipation to the future, for, as Jam says, “the rest of life—that imperfect thing—[is] waiting.” From Belzhar.
During the final class the students confront Mrs. Quenell about the journals and how much she knew about what they could do. She knew they could help these handpicked students with their "issues", but she also knew there was much more going on.
“But it’s never just been the journals that have made the difference, I don’t think. It’s also the way the students are with one another . . . the way they talk about books and authors and themselves. Not just their problems, but their passions too. The way they form a little society and discuss whatever matters to them. Books light the fire—whether it’s a book that’s already written, or an empty journal that needs to be filled in.” Mrs. Quenell, from Belzhar.
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