Fourteen-year -old Katie moved to a small Missouri town two years ago, after the death of her mother. She now lives with her stern, inaccessible father and his new wife, who means well but who cannot mend the tear in Katie's heart. Lonely, and isolated by her status as the "smart" kid at school, Katie forges alliances when and where she can: with a fellow misfit named Cynthia, with the old couple down the road, and with the three little boys she babysits for. When Katie tries to move up in her social world, she end up losing her closet friend and learns some very hard lessons about herself. Meanwhile, Katie's ties to the Texas town where she grew up are unraveling nd she discovers that she has grown away from everything that once defined her and must learns some very hard lessons about herself. Meanwhile, Katie's ties to the Texas town where she grew up are unraveling and she discovers that she has grown away from everything that once defined her and must learn who she is and who she can be al over again.
Publishers Weekly
Berg is the master of the soft-focus, nonconfrontational women's novel, as evidenced in her 2000 Oprah Book Club selection, Open House. In her latest work, which again features the pubescent narrator first encountered in her debut novel, Durable Goods, she describes a summer in the life of 13-year-old Katie Nash. It is 1961, and Katie's mother has been dead for two years; Katie lives with her dour military father and peppy stepmother in Missouri. Resigned to allowing her strict dad to find her summer jobs, in her free time she gorges herself on junk food with her best friend, Cynthia, and works on her tan. Katie's first-person voice is deliberative and colloquial, and the story told is rarely eventful: the highlights come when Katie first starts working for a kind, needy elderly couple, the Randolphs, and wins a radio contest offering a free plane ticket anywhere in the world. Yet where does Katie choose to fly? Back to Fort Hood, Tex., where she last lived before her mother died and where she can revisit her former best friend, Cherylanne, who is slightly older than Katie and well versed in the ways of boys, clothes and getting married fast. The trip peters out when Katie realizes she really has nothing in common with boy-crazy Cherylanne. Meanwhile, Mr. Randolph secures a scholarship for Katie at the upscale school where he once taught, but even this boon becomes a hurdle when Katie belittles Cynthia to land in the rich girls' good graces. Berg lays nostalgia traps at every turn in her 10th feel-good novel, but her readers for the most part will be happy to fall into them. 14-city author tour. (June 11) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Categories:
- Teen & Young Adult
- Literature & Fiction
- Literary
- Literature & Fiction
Publisher : Washington Square Press
Author : Berg
Language : English
Edition : Reprint
Published :2003-05-13
Number Of Pages : 240
Binding : paperback
ISBN-10 : 0743411358
ISBN-13 : 9780743411356
Item weight : 0.78 lb
Dimensions : 0.55 in x 5.31 in x 8.25 in
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