A weakness of the book is that her level of personal involvement in the writing seems uneven. This book is an unabashed memoir, where she describes how she got involved with the project (a longing to know more about what she saw in her own family pictures and felt drawn to, in the face of a quite secular upbringing). However, having described how she got involved in this project, she then fails to tell us how she resolved her longing. What did she learn about these people that enables her to look at the photographs without feeling the same drawing-in?

I say this despite the fact that the individual parts of the book are highly personal -- her descriptions of the mikveh and of the lives of unmarried girls are lyrical and moving.

The book is well worth reading, but the author's nearly completely assimilated background does make it hard for her to distinguish between "ultra-orthodox" religious practices, and more common practices of observant Jews (say the modern Orthodox, for example). Many things she encountered elicited a "gee whiz -- how odd!" response from her, and it was strange that she couldn't distinguish between the practices she encountered which are unique to Hasidic life and the practices which are common to practicing Jews of many stripes. The book would have been stronger had she spent less time looking for academic explanations of what she encountered and spent more time understanding the context -- how do these people fit into the context of observant Jewish practice?

On the whole, however, it is an excellent book, well-written and worth reading.