It was the weirdest feeling. For the first time, I really understood the phrase “to be someone’s puppet.”

I profess to being, what I call, “technically challenged.” Credit card terms, bank offers, points and mileage—to me, they’re all one big cholent pot of confusing lingo and terminology. Baruch Hashem we’ve worked out a set-up in which my husband more or less takes care of all of these kinds of things for the family, so I can happily be left out of it all.

But sometimes I have no choice but to get involved. Like when a credit card is under my name, and the credit card company only agrees to talk to me—not hubby—about whatever the issue may be. That’s how I found myself one day having the strangest conversation ever, with American Express.

There I was, on the phone with them, my husband seated strategically to my right.

“Okay, ma’am,” Cindy, the AmEx representative, chirped. “Let’s get started. What’s your member ID?”

Member ID? I looked blankly at my husband.

“She means this number,” he whispered, pointing to the paper in my hand.

“Oh, of course! My member ID!” I chirped back. “Sure! Here it is.”

And so our conversation went. Every time Cindy asked me a question, I’d mouth it to my husband, who’d quickly mouth back the answer, which I’d then repeat, with as much confidence as I could muster, to the ever-so-patient rep.

Like I said, it was a really weird—and really uncomfortable—feeling. When I finally hung up, I mentally resolved to sit down and familiarize myself with the credit card lingo once and for all, no matter what it would take, so I wouldn’t have to be anyone’s puppet again, even for such a small and inconsequential thing.

Yaffa Levinsky, in Dance of the Puppet, knows all too well how it feels to be a puppet—and not just for a couple of insignificant occasions. Yaffa’s whole day job revolves around her being other people’s puppet…unless she decides to do something about that.

But can she? Can the soft young woman manage to acquire her own backbone and do things her own way, for a change? Can the girl who’s happy to become a cleaning lady, simply because she’s sure she can’t do anything else, actually make waves in one of the most prestigious high schools in the city?

That, dear readers, awaits to be seen in this phenomenal, suspenseful novel, by bestselling author Esther Rappaport!

Click here to purchase online.

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