As she did in Blue Eyes Better
, Wallace-Brodeur here shares a trenchant tale about belonging, hurt and healing. In a lyrical yet spare first-person narrative reminiscent of Patricia MacLachlan's novels, the author deftly shapes a portrait of 12-year-old Sage, whose mother suddenly announces that she will be attending a summer program. Sage heads off to Maine to stay with her great-aunts, Addie and Bea (whom she met "exactly once," six years earlier), taking with her the only picture she has of her late father, whom her mother knew only briefly and who never knew that he had a daughter. "He looked like the kind of man you could talk to. Which I did. All the time," the narrator confides. In a poignant recollection, she describes how her mother offhandedly informed Sage of his death, some six weeks after the fact, which becomes a source of tension between them. The refuge she discovers with Addie and Bea gives Sage some perspective, and as she eagerly absorbs details of their past, she comes to understand how history has shaped her mother, her mother's parents and theirs before them. The author's sense of timelessness and of endless days contribute mightily to the novel's feeling of continuity. After a neighbor relays a story about her grandfather, Sage perceptively notes, "We both knew it was the stories that mattered." Wallace-Brodeur clearly—and affectingly—knows how to make stories matter. Ages 9-up. (May)
