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Summary
Summary
Annie struggles with grief after the death of her newborn sister.
Annie can always count on spending summers at her grandparents'. This summer should be even better because Mama is going to have a baby soon. Before Daddy leaves for his Air Force assignment, he gives Annie a journal for summer memories. But now Annie is grieving over the death of her newborn sister. How can she tell Daddy that ever since the baby died, Mama is slipping away? If Annie wrote those words, Mama might stay that way forever. The only comfort Annie finds is in holding a stone she calls her "rock baby." Then Annie secretly befriends a mysterious woman who helps Annie accept her loss, while Annie hopes to draw her new friend back into the community. But all that is interrupted when a crisis reveals their unlikely alliance and leads to a surprising turn of events.
Author Notes
Edith M. Hemingway has coauthored two Civil War novels. This is her first solo novel. She lives in Frederick, Maryland.
Reviews (3)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-Annie, almost 10, and her pregnant mother are spending the summer of 1963 with Annie's grandparents on their North Carolina farm. Then the long-awaited baby is born prematurely and dies the following day. Annie is devastated and doesn't know how to deal with her grief. Her Air Force father is currently stationed in Germany, and her mother sinks into a deep depression and withdraws from the family. Avoiding the house, Annie often explores the nearby woods where she meets an elderly woman who becomes her friend and confidant. Miss Eliza is living in a shack that belongs to an individual who, according to local legend, was sent to prison years earlier for murdering her husband. Before long, Miss Eliza shares the story of her past with Annie, who continues their friendship despite the community's negative attitudes. Gradually, with the help of Miss Eliza and her supportive grandparents, Annie begins to accept her sister's death, but it takes Annie's near-death experience with a swarm of yellow jackets to pull her mother back to reality. The characters and setting are finely drawn and the author has an acute sense of how time seems to pass more slowly for children than adults. The love of family members for one another is heartwarming. A well-written and enjoyable novel.-Nancy P. Reeder, Heathwood Hall Episcopal School, Columbia, SC (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Set in the 1960s in the North Carolina mountains, this heartbreaking offering tells the story of ten-year-old Annie Winters, who has just lost her brand-new baby sister, Mary Kate. What's worse, her mother sinks into a deep depression, and her father is worlds away, stationed in Germany. Annie's grandparents and her friend Bobby are there to support her, but she finds true comfort in a surprising place. In a decrepit old house on Tater Hill lives Miss Eliza, an elderly woman who, Annie later learns, has just completed a 30-year jail sentence for killing her abusive husband. If readers can acclimate quickly enough to the grief pouring off the pages, they will certainly begin to root for Annie's mother to recover, for Eliza to be reintegrated into the community and for Annie to find some happiness and peace. For a great discussion, pair this title with Marilynn Taylor McDowell's Carolina Harmony (2009), which tackles similar themes while conveying an even richer sense of this intriguing time and place. (Historical fiction. 10-14) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
After Annie's baby sister dies at birth in 1963, Mama sinks into a deep depression. With Daddy on U.S. Air Force assignment overseas, Annie, 10, feels lost and lonely in her grandparents' mountain community in North Carolina. Home is suffocating. Mama won't talk, and she barely moves. Annie does find friendship with a mysterious, solitary woman, an ex-convict who lives in a shack after serving 30 years in prison. Is she a murderer, as the townspeople say? Drawing on the author's childhood roots, the heart of this first novel is the sense of place, described in simple lyrical words: the soaring mountains and the valley rippling outward in waves and waves of fading blue, like one of Grandma's patchwork quilts. True to Annie's viewpoint, the particulars tell a universal drama of childhood grief, complete in all its sadness, anger, loneliness, and healing.--Rochman, Hazel Copyright 2009 Booklist
