two hundred public words 29/30
I guess the solution is to just continue this as an occasional series, once I'm done with today's and tomorrow's entry, which would finish the thirty entries in thirty days challenge. So, for THESE two hundred words (see, I managed it last time), another local-ish author.
Actually, I guess I don't know whether N. M. Caldwell is local exactly. I just know that she was published by Milkweed Press, which is some kind of equal-opportunity-new-authors-not-quite-self-publishing deal, which mostly publishes fiction with a social message. Possibly even a social-work message. That's often a recipe for disaster. In this case, however, it is not.
Caldwell has written two books -- one story and its sequel (as far as I know, these are the only ones) about adoption. They're interesting studies of very withdrawn and self-protective teenage girl who has bounced from foster home to foster home, and how she is adopted into a very self-confident, very STRUCTURED family. The first book is called The Ocean Within, and the second one is Tides. Much of both of the books takes place at the family's strong grandmother's house near the Atlantic Ocean. Maine, quite possibly. Or Massachusetts? I don't remember. In any case, again these two books are a character study of a stubborn and defensive girl. The author doesn't flip the stereotype and transform her into a sweet girl, rescued by unfaltering love, either. She stays prickly and possibly Aspergers-ish, without that diagnosis being raised. And the family is something. They're one of those -- do these really exist? -- families with an extremely well-developed persona, where everyone knows their place and there are traditions and rules and consequences and everlasting parental patience, and firm discipline. Now that I think about it a little bit, it's sort of as if this writer imagined what the ideal kind of a family to adopt someone who's been through an unending stream of insecure foster homes. They're interesting books, though, and I find myself rereading them fairly often, somewhat with the same attitude I bring to Cynthia Voigt's family, the Tillermans. They're not much like my family.
Actually, I guess I don't know whether N. M. Caldwell is local exactly. I just know that she was published by Milkweed Press, which is some kind of equal-opportunity-new-authors-not-quite-self-publishing deal, which mostly publishes fiction with a social message. Possibly even a social-work message. That's often a recipe for disaster. In this case, however, it is not.
Caldwell has written two books -- one story and its sequel (as far as I know, these are the only ones) about adoption. They're interesting studies of very withdrawn and self-protective teenage girl who has bounced from foster home to foster home, and how she is adopted into a very self-confident, very STRUCTURED family. The first book is called The Ocean Within, and the second one is Tides. Much of both of the books takes place at the family's strong grandmother's house near the Atlantic Ocean. Maine, quite possibly. Or Massachusetts? I don't remember. In any case, again these two books are a character study of a stubborn and defensive girl. The author doesn't flip the stereotype and transform her into a sweet girl, rescued by unfaltering love, either. She stays prickly and possibly Aspergers-ish, without that diagnosis being raised. And the family is something. They're one of those -- do these really exist? -- families with an extremely well-developed persona, where everyone knows their place and there are traditions and rules and consequences and everlasting parental patience, and firm discipline. Now that I think about it a little bit, it's sort of as if this writer imagined what the ideal kind of a family to adopt someone who's been through an unending stream of insecure foster homes. They're interesting books, though, and I find myself rereading them fairly often, somewhat with the same attitude I bring to Cynthia Voigt's family, the Tillermans. They're not much like my family.