Serendipity in France by Esther Sadoff

“Serendipity in France” by Esther Sadoff is a collection of poetry that traverses the inner life of its subject as she discovers herself in the everyday world of a distant place. As Serendipity studies “what everything means,” common objects take on new meaning as she observes them. She wants to be seen but also feels too exposed “like ice melting into a puddle.” But Serendipity is an intrepid woman who “doesn’t want to lie down. / She sits at the ready, she stands. / Ready to plunge, to dive into anything.” Sadoff’s poems are brave and suspenseful as she follows this traveler who wants “the chance to hold luck between her teeth.”

–Judy Ireland, SoFloPoJo Senior Poetry Editor

“The poems of Sadoff’s second collection, “Serendipity in France,” are a vivid collage of the American traveler at the whims of chance happenings. Sadoff creates intrinsic trials and awakenings that ask, “Who knew a room could be filled with so many thoughts?” Through the speaker, Serendipity, Sadoff thrusts her audience into the anxieties of the contemporary world; all its brightness, and all its seclusion wrapped tightly in eloquent displays of what the speaker calls “aloneness.” Readers will find themselves in a thread of kaleidoscopic visions as they travel with Serendipity through love, grief, adversity, and as Sadoff says, “The thrill of Lightness.”

–Samuel Mcferron, Jet Fuel Review Editor