This is a heart wrenching story about death and survival; it's also about a bi-racial girl, with blue eyes, growing up amid the racial tension in Chicago. Tragedy strikes three children and their mother one day, and only the girl survives. The story follows Rachel, the girl who survives, Brick (Jamie), the young boy who found their bodies, Laronne, the employer, who tried to help Nella (the mother), the African-American grandmother who took Rachel in and even Roger, Rachel's absent father. All these main characters are traumatized in their own way by the "accident", and use their own means to deal with the trauma. It is also a story about strangers, unknowingly tied to a tragedy and how they interact once they meet.

anyone who is interested in reading about people battling with trauma, addiction, displacement, abandonment and deep loss.

I really like how Rachel was introduced to us in the beginning. Her mother was Danish and her father was Black. Her thoughts were a muddle, the way someone thinking in one language would try to explain something in another. This was very well done. Then as she grew and learned more, her speech matured.

when Jamie (not yet called Brick), found the bodies. Being a bird lover, he thought he saw a bird fly by his window, ran out his building only to find he hadn't see a bird at all. I felt how devastating this moment was. I had to stop reading and just breathe.

cry.

very sorrowful. There were some parts that made me smile, like when Rachel made friends and started feeling like she belonged.

Heidi Durrow did such a good job of developing the characters for this book.

it is very well written. I tripped over some sentences while reading the grandmother's dialect, but that's to be expected. Other than that, it is very easy to read. It is also a quick read.

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Created Oct 07, 2024 at 6:34pm • Submit your own review...