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“Gracie C. McKeever (c) November 2011
Growing up in Brooklyn with their self-absorbed mother who all but ignored them unless she needed them to do something for her or likewise run an errand, sisters Lulu and Merry didn't have what anyone would call an ideal childhood. Things, however, take a drastic turn for the tragic after their mother throws their father out and refuses to let him return under any circumstances. Except that he does return one day, drunk and demanding to speak to the girls' mother. Giving in to paternal pressure, young Lulu let's him into the house against her mother's instructions. Before the day is over, Lulu's mother will be dead and her sister Merry seriously injured by her father's hand.
With their father now behind bars for murder, the girls must rely on the kindness of blood and strangers for shelter. Except after the murder, Lulu and Merry's remaining relatives are either too old and too sick to take them in, or unwilling to harbor the murderer's daughters, treating them like lepers and as if murder is catching.
Lulu and Merry wind up going to a group home where they grow up in the worst conditions with the threat of violence greeting them around every corner. Things get minimally better when they are taken into foster care by a kind worker at the home, but the girls are nowhere near out of the woods yet. The dye has been cast and the emotional scars are on their souls to stay, the questions of whether they can forgive, not only their father, but themselves, yet to be answered.
Lulu and Merry handle the trauma in their own ways. Driven and intense Lulu becomes a successful doctor and refuses to have anything at all to do with her father. Merry turns to meaningless sex and alcohol to deal and against all Lulu's wishes stays in contact with and visits her father faithfully throughout the decades. To Lulu, the man is dead and not any of her sister's arguments to the contrary can change that.
This was a powerful and sensitively drawn family drama of healing and redemption, dealing with the worst betrayal and breach of trust that a parent can commit against a child, and showing the resiliency of the human spirit even when all hope seems to be lost.
A well-written, evocative and thought-provoking debut!”
Gracie wrote this review Saturday, December 10, 2011.
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