National Book Award Finalist Leslie Connor here gives us a beautiful, lyrical, and insightful story about moving through grief, growing up, and finding family. Thirteen-year-old Lydia’s mother has just died after a long struggle with terminal heart disease. Her father had left long ago, so Lydia moves in with her mother’s sister Bratches and her wife Eileen. They live on a farm in Connecticut along with the elderly Elloroy, technically their landlord but effectively a part of the family. Brat and Eileen are established in their family routines, occasionally argumentative, but solid in their love for each other and for those they take in. They feel well-rounded and realistic.
Even though her new family is kind (and gently quirky), Lydia doesn’t feel quite at home, as she is still grieving her mother and trying to adapt to her new circumstances. She must also adjust to the small rural school in her new community after having been homeschooled by her mother so that the two of them could spend as much time together as possible. She finds comfort, though, in the paper “goddesses” she and her mother created together—paperwork collage constructions of women, each embodying various attributes or concepts, like The Goddess of Gratitude and The Goddess of Home Repairs. They represent the special relationship she had with her mother, though, so she isn’t ready to share them with Brat and Eileen.
The family soon adopts a similarly mistrustful rescue dog. Lydia is not a dog person and doesn’t like the misbehaving creature at first. Over time, however, we see their relationship deepen as Lydia also opens up to her aunts and her new schoolmates. Even though several classmates play an important, positive role, Connor keeps the focus on home life and how we weave the threads of family, neighborliness, and friendship. There’s also a storyline involving a horrific act committed (not by Lydia or her family) against two baby goats at a nearby farm; this may disturb those sensitive to animal cruelty (even though it is described in retrospect, not real-time), but ultimately leads to an arc about kindness and community.
Despite the notes of tragedy woven through the story, Connor creates a tale that is ultimately joyous and buoying, giving us a marvelous gem of a book on loss, learning, and love.
