Childish Fancy

As a young reader, I was drawn to any book written by Noel Streatfeild. Although the plots stuck to a similar pattern - orphan is taken in by poor relations, orphan must dance/act/skate to earn her way in the world, orphan finds great success - the predictability was comforting.  

The Flight of Gemma Hardy appeals to those of us fascinated by the orphan tale, but with unpredictable plot twists that the stories of our childhoods lacked. In Margot Livesey's book, Gemma becomes an orphan after her Scottish mother dies from a freak accident and her Icelandic father dies at sea. She goes to live with her uncle's family in Scotland. 

Not wanting to live with her cruel aunt after her uncle's death, Gemma finds a place at a boarding school. Since she is on scholarship, she must work to pay for her keep. Undeterred by the weary tasks of peeling potatoes and scrubbing floors, she keeps up with her studies. Before she can take the college entrance exams, however, the school closes, and she must find work as an au pair. 

Traveling to the Orkney Islands, Gemma cares for another young orphan who has been taken in by a bachelor uncle.  After the relationship with her employer ends poorly, she leaves with little money and no prospects. 

Gemma, taking on an alias, ends up finding work in a town not far from where she began. After a young man sets his unwanted sights on her, she sets off again. This time, she goes to Iceland in the hopes of discovering any remaining relatives she might have. 

Livesey has crafted an old-fashioned tale filled with dramatic landscapes, wicked matrons, and a headstrong heroine. Looking for another book in the same vein might lead you to Jane Eyre. But I'm going to look for my well-worn copy of Ballet Shoes.

Then Comes Marriage

Evvie and Ben are in their forties. Evvie works in a frame shop and attends protests for animal rights. Ben works as a medical equipment salesman and likes wearing a suit and tie. When Ben announces one day that he's leaving her, Evvie is bereft. Told from alternating points of view, we see Evvie slowly unravel as she plots more and more elaborate schemes to get Ben to come back.

The author, Jane McCafferty, realistically captures the guilty elation of the one leaving and the obsessive self-doubt of the one being left. We admire Evvie's determination, but sympathize with Ben's frustration. We worry over her trust in strangers. We fume at his enchantment with a new lover. And cheer when he realizes she too is less than perfect. 

Where is the line between being persistent and perverse? First You Try Everything charmingly offers a satisfying answer. 

Enrique's Journey by Sonia Nazario

I was reminded of this film recently while reading a book called Enrique's Journey. However nerve- wracking it is to watch the little boy in the movie make his way across the border, it is even more devastating to read the true stories of children trying to find their mothers in Sonia Nazario's book.  

Enrique's mother left to find work in the US when he was five. Now that he is a teenager, Enrique decides to travel from Honduras to North Carolina to find her. With no money, he travels through Mexico by riding on the tops of freight trains. Not only must he dodge immigration authorities, he also must evade thieves, gangs, and local police. Going days without food or sleep, he must be constantly alert to the dangers of the tracks- tree branches, derailment, and tunnels. If not, he risks broken bones, severed limbs, or death.  

Nazario, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, retraces the trip that Enrique and scores of other children attempt in their efforts to reach the US. In heartbreaking detail, she describes the mothers' dilemma in leaving their children, the harrowing train rides of those who set out to find family, and the generosity of the citizens and churches who shelter and feed the children along the way. These are stories you won't easily forget.  

Water, water, nowhere

When I was in elementary school I remember being frightened by the nuclear holocaust. Images of mushroom clouds and vast landscapes of dust haunted my daydreams. However, fallout is low on my list of worries these days. In fact, I had to Google "nuclear cloud" because I couldn't remember its shape. No, these days I'm haunted by a different post-apocalyptic reality - drought.

Gabrielle Zevin visits this world in her book all these things I've done. Her narrator Anya Balanchine is a junior in high school. She lives with her grandmother and two siblings. Her older brother Leo is being courted by the mob side of the family - which keeps the black market supplied with contraband chocolate. Her younger sister Natty has nightmares about her parents' deaths. 

Drained swimming pools, ninety second showers, and the rarity of oranges are related matter-of-factly as Anya and her friends go from coffee speakeasies to discos in deserted museums. Along with the typical teenage stressors of boyfriends and science quizzes, Anya must keep her family together despite attempted murder charges, threats from the DA's office, and the death of her grandmother.Oh,and hardly a drop to drink. 

all these things I've done will keep you up the first night reading. And the second, third, and fourth? Ruminating. 

Tickets, Please

My son has been going through a horse phase. He's often seen riding his stick horse "Red" - a name he got from endless viewings of this movie. On a recent trip to "Cowboy Town," he walked right up to one man on a horse and asked, "Is this your job?" He'll wear his cowboy boots with his jeans or swimsuit. 

While my son admires the hat and boots side of horses, the novel Boleto takes a starker look at the modern straits of ranching. Alyson Hagy takes us to Lost Cabin, Wyoming and the struggling ranch of the Testerman family. Family members have all had to take jobs in town to keep afloat. However, the youngest son, Will, has his eye on raising horses. A chance encounter with Don Enrique, a well-to-do horseman from Argentina, convinces Will that raising polo horses might be just the ticket. And so he's off...to California.

Echoing the voices of Hemingway and McCarthy, Hagy's simple declarative sentences clearly convey Will's determination to make something of himself and his horse. He's not going through a phase.

Hold Still

Nina LaCour's book of this title examines friendship and its loss. Caitlin finds her best friend's journal a few months after Ingrid has committed suicide. She reads it slowly over the course of the novel as she tries to make new friends, flunks her favorite class- photography, and builds a tree house. Caitlin's depression is palpable, but LaCour's take on her spiral (upward) through the book's progression is engrossing. 

LaCour's latest book, The Disenchantments, is just as engaging as it follows Colby and Bev as they hop in a VW bus for a final tour of Bev's band. It is the summer after graduation. Eschewing college, their plan is (or was) to depart for a backpacking trip across Europe after the tour. However, Colby soon finds out Bev has had other plans all along. 

LaCour aptly captures the awkward silences, tense navigations, and extravagant snack orders of any epic road trip. A sprinkle of tattoo artists, record store clerks, and graffiti artists add color to the realistic back and forth of four friends who will soon be going their separate ways.