Alice Cary

Children's & YAPicture Book

An urban oasis

Review by Alice Cary

Mae, a young girl who moves to the city, desperately misses her garden in Florette, a quiet but thoroughly lovely picture book by Australian author-illustrator Anna Walker. Mae tries to make the best of her new apartment by drawing flowers, birds and trees on the moving boxes that fill her room. She draws chalk butterflies on the pavement outside, but the rain washes her creations away.

One day, a bird leads her to a store window filled with a lush ocean of greenery. Although the store is closed, a tiny sprout grows through a crack in the nearby sidewalk. Mae takes the sprout home, eventually starting her own little garden in a jar. That one sprout is all it takes for Mae’s new world to blossom, as Walker’s greenery-filled watercolors beautifully show.

Walker marries text and illustrations particularly well, using words sparingly while showing how Mae’s world fills with new plants as well as new friends. She was inspired to create this book during a family vacation in Paris, and although Paris is never mentioned, its scenes are distinctly Parisian. “We were on our way to The Louvre when I noticed a shop window full of plants,” Walker notes on her website. “We rushed by, but I kept thinking about that forest behind the glass.”

Florette is a wonderful story about nature in the city that thoughtfully addresses the difficulties and necessity of adapting to change.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Mae, a young girl who moves to the city, desperately misses her garden in Florette, a quiet but thoroughly lovely picture book by Australian author-illustrator Anna Walker. Mae tries to make the best of her new apartment by drawing flowers, birds and trees on the moving boxes that fill her room. She draws chalk butterflies on the pavement outside, but the rain washes her creations away.

Children's & YAPicture Book

A march of solidarity

Review by Alice Cary

Sometimes the best way to address kindness is through actions, not words. I Walk with Vanessa: A Story About a Simple Act of Kindness (ages 4 to 8) is a wordless picture book that does just that. A young black girl has just moved to town and started school. As she walks home after school, feeling lonely, a white boy bullies her, his mouth snarling, the emotionally explosive confrontation surrounded by an angry sea of red. A classmate with brown skin and straight hair watches the exchange and is left shaken and saddened as she watches the newcomer run home in tears.

The next morning, this thoughtful classmate is waiting for the bullied girl at her front door, taking her hand and escorting her to school. Soon there’s an entourage as others join the growing procession, until the newcomer, lonely no more, is surrounded by a sea of new friends.

This simple, touching story comes to life in the hands of Kerascoët, the pen name for the French husband-and-wife illustration team of Marie Pommepuy and Sébastien Cosset. Their simply drawn characters are filled with energy and expression, powerfully showing the angst of being bullied and the joy of solidarity and friendship.

Sometimes the best way to address kindness is through actions, not words. I Walk with Vanessa: A Story About a Simple Act of Kindness (ages 4 to 8) is a wordless picture book that does just that. A young black girl has just moved to town and started school. As she walks home after school, feeling lonely, a white boy bullies her, his mouth snarling, the emotionally explosive confrontation surrounded by an angry sea of red. A classmate with brown skin and straight hair watches the exchange and is left shaken and saddened as she watches the newcomer run home in tears.

NonfictionMemoir

A poet’s best friend

Review by Alice Cary

Poet Stephen Kuusisto faced a crisis when he lost his job as a poetry professor in upstate New York. Kuusisto has been legally blind since birth, and he now needed a new job—and a new way of navigating the world. It’s a journey he explores in Have Dog, Will Travel.

Growing up in the 1950s, Kuusisto’s parents taught him to never show others his blindness, to live actively and try to ignore his limitations. He writes, “My parents thought disabled kids were victims of a nearly unimaginable fate, a predatory darkness.” Incredibly, he rode a bike, marched in Boy Scout parades and read with books pressed against his face. But he also faced endless bullying and was forced to live in a carefully circumscribed world that he navigated by familiarity and step counting. “Faking sight is like being illiterate—you pretend to competence but live by guesswork,” he writes. Nearing 40, he finally decided to stop pretending.

Kuusisto met with a representative from the New York State Commission for the Blind, who was hardly encouraging and doubted Kuusisto would find work. He referred Kuusisto to a company that manufactured plastic lemons for lemon juice, saying they sometimes hired blind people.

Yet he did not let this less-than- heartening meeting deter him from seeking assistance. Enter Kuusisto’s first guide dog, a yellow Labrador named Corky. Their “arranged marriage” expanded Kuusisto’s world by literal leaps and bounds, and their relationship forms the heart of this enchanting, enlightening book. As Kuusisto describes, having a guide dog “doesn’t feel like driving a car. It’s not like running. Sometimes I think it’s a bit like swimming. A really long swim when you’re buoyant and fast.”

Before long, Kuusisto is navigating the streets of New York City with Corky, experiencing a sense of freedom he’d never felt before. And in the years that followed, Corky not only liberated this poet but also ushered him back into the world, opening up his life in ways that he would never have imagined. Have Dog, Will Travel is an illuminating memoir of mobility, ability, delight and discovery.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Poet Stephen Kuusisto faced a crisis when he lost his job as a poetry professor in upstate New York. Kuusisto has been legally blind since birth, and he now needed a new job—and a new way of navigating the world. It’s a journey he explores in Have Dog, Will Travel.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

A prickly preteen comes of age

Review by Alice Cary

Eleven-year-old Frances has taken to calling herself “Figgrotten.” A “natural observer” whose hero is anthropologist Margaret Mead, Figgrotten feels most herself when she’s all alone, perched high atop the rocks behind her house, conducting an experiment that requires feeding crows.

After a hurtful, hateful disagreement, Figgrotten vows to never again speak to her fashionable, popular sister, Christinia, who is mortified by her sister’s oddball ways, her unkempt hair and her too-small coat.

Figgrotten’s world collapses when her 83-year-old bus driver dies. Alvin Turkson was her Shakespeare-loving, Gandhi-quoting best friend. Adding to Figgrotten’s misery is the new kid in class, a shy, smart boy named James who seems to be favored by Figgrotten’s beloved teacher Mr. Stanley. Figgrotten eventually learns to navigate this tricky terrain, to deal with her grief, to make peace with her sister and James, and to even find a new friend. She discovers that she “could hang on to who she was and still be part of the world, which she could now feel tugging at her.”

Author April Stevens’ carefully crafted, beautiful prose imbues this tightly plotted, engrossing tale with weighty themes that never feel heavy-handed or preachy. The Heart and Mind of Frances Pauley sings out heartfelt truths about Stevens’ quirky and genuine characters, who will resonate deeply with lucky readers.

 

This article was originally published in the February 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Eleven-year-old Frances has taken to calling herself “Figgrotten.” A “natural observer” whose hero is anthropologist Margaret Mead, Figgrotten feels most herself when she’s all alone, perched high atop the rocks behind her house, conducting an experiment that requires feeding crows.

NonfictionTravelMemoir

Bovine love

Review by Alice Cary

“It’s true that at first I laughed at drinking cow urine but feed me a good story and I can believe anything,” writes author Shoba Narayan. Indeed, she feeds readers a good story in her udderly delightful The Milk Lady of Bangalore.

When Narayan, her husband and their two daughters moved from New York City back to the couple’s native India, Narayan was no doubt looking for something to write about. She found it right in the elevator of her new apartment building: a cow riding up to the third floor for a housewarming ceremony, led by its owner, Sarala, a woman who sold raw milk. Hindus consider cows sacred, and India has what Narayan calls a “cow obsession.” Soon this obsession rubs off on her, turning her into “an evangelist for fresh cow’s milk.”

Sarala led the author straight into a herd of often funny and always fascinating bovine adventures, including drinking cow urine (supposedly a curative), mixing a cow dung-yogurt concoction as fertilizer, falling in love with a red cow with “eyes the size of oval macaroons” and even briefly owning a cow before donating it to Sarala.

There’s plenty of heart and soul in this book as Narayan takes readers on a unique tour of her Indian neighborhood, where there’s never a dull moment. Narayan is an astute observer, particularly of herself, noting: “The reason I want to buy milk from a cow is because I am trying to recapture the simple times of my childhood, particularly after the intricate dance that I have undertaken for the last twenty years as an immigrant in America. Milk is my way of reconnecting with the patch of earth that I call home.”

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Shoba Narayan for The Milk Lady of Bangalore.

This article was originally published in the February 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

“It’s true that at first I laughed at drinking cow urine but feed me a good story and I can believe anything,” writes author Shoba Narayan. Indeed, she feeds readers a good story in her udderly delightful The Milk Lady of Bangalore.

NonfictionTravel

A home of one’s choosing

Review by Alice Cary

Kushanava Choudhury, the child of two scientists from India, spent his childhood moving back and forth between India and the U.S. Although he was born in Buffalo, New York, it was Calcutta that captured his heart. When Choudhury was 12, his parents finally left the city for good for Highland Park, New Jersey, and Choudhury’s world was changed forever. As he explains in The Epic City: The World of the Streets of Calcutta, “All those cricket matches, all the pleasures of my childhood were taken away . . . I lost the capacity to be fully myself.”

Choudhury kept returning to Calcutta—as a student and summer intern at a city newspaper, and then as a recent graduate of Princeton, and again after earning a Ph.D. in political theory from Yale. His beloved city beckoned him back again and again.

As the city’s rich and varied history swirls about him along the lively streets and sidewalks, Choudhury is not blind to the city’s shortcomings, calling it “the devil’s city” and “one big pisspot.” No matter―the author remains an adept, wonder-filled and thoughtful tour guide. He has experience in this matter, as he must convince his wife, Durba, of Calcutta’s charms. Durba, a fellow Ph.D. student at Yale, grew up in modern New Delhi and despises Calcutta.

Readers grow to understand Calcutta’s complexities and contradictions as Choudhury explains its history and introduces neighborhoods and inhabitants. The Epic City is most compelling when he explores his own past, taking us to his grandmother’s house for her funeral and showing us the two-room house where his father (one of 13 children) grew up.

Despite Calcutta’s difficulties, Choudhury’s passion never wanes. As he so eloquently concludes: “We human beings are not meant to live exclusively indoors. We need to hear the symphony of the street, feel the pavement at our feet. The life outside our door beckons us to a destiny larger than the lonesome murmurs of our souls.”

Kushanava Choudhury, the child of two scientists from India, spent his childhood moving back and forth between India and the U.S. Although he was born in Buffalo, New York, it was Calcutta that captured his heart. When Choudhury was 12, his parents finally left the city for good for Highland Park, New Jersey, and Choudhury’s world was changed forever. As he explains in The Epic City: The World of the Streets of Calcutta, “All those cricket matches, all the pleasures of my childhood were taken away . . . I lost the capacity to be fully myself.”

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

How to make a family

Review by Alice Cary

BookPage Children's Top Pick, January 2018

Punch! That’s what Robinson Hart does to Alex Carter, the biggest bully in fifth grade, when he calls her a “motherless Robin bird.” Robinson’s mother died soon after she was born, so Alex hit a nerve. In this moment, the feisty, memorable, baseball-loving heroine of Lindsey Stoddard’s Just Like Jackie momentarily forgets the words of her grandpa: “The man you’re named for was a great ballplayer. The first black player in the league. People taunted him all the time, but he didn’t pay no mind.”

School administrators in the small Vermont town try to help Robbie control her broiling anger, but a family tree project isn’t helping. She knows little about her family, except that she is one-quarter black and lives with her black grandpa, whom she adores.

Robbie is happiest when she’s helping Grandpa fix cars at his garage, along with the other mechanic, Harold, who is adopting a baby with his partner. But Robbie’s been increasingly on edge because she’s also trying to hide an important secret: Grandpa is becoming more and more forgetful. She knows she needs to find out about her family before Grandpa’s memories are gone forever.

Robbie soon learns that she’s not the only one aggravated by the family tree project. She’s forced to attend Group Guidance meetings at school, along with none other than the dreaded Alex Carter and several other students. A sensitive counselor named Ms. Gloria gently allows each group member to gradually open up and reveal their troubles in a Breakfast Club sort of way.

Just Like Jackie covers a cornucopia of social hot points: Alzheimer’s, a parent dying of cancer, divorce, mixed-race families, gay couples, anger management, bullying, adoption and more. The story never feels forced, however, nor the issues gratuitous. Stoddard’s natural storytelling talent allows Robbie’s character to emerge like an extraordinary butterfly breaking its way out of a cocoon.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Punch! That’s what Robinson Hart does to Alex Carter, the biggest bully in fifth grade, when he calls her a “motherless Robin bird.” Robinson’s mother died soon after she was born, so Alex hit a nerve. In this moment, the feisty, memorable, baseball-loving heroine of Lindsey Stoddard’s Just Like Jackie momentarily forgets the words of her grandpa: “The man you’re named for was a great ballplayer. The first black player in the league. People taunted him all the time, but he didn’t pay no mind.”

NonfictionEssays

Twelve portraits of an island

Review by Alice Cary

For many, Cuba seems like a distant exotic cousin you've grown up hearing about but never been able to meet. Whether you're planning a visit or merely intrigued, Cuba on the Verge is a collection of 12 essays that offer an engrossing glimpse into this island nation and its endless dichotomies.

Carlos Manuel Álvarez writes beautifully about a 2015 visit with his father, a former doctor who had recently emigrated to Miami, and how they worked together shaking coconuts from the trees of wealthy homeowners, collecting 70 cents for each nut.

Wendy Guerra chronicles decades of change in Cuba, from the elegance of the early 1960s to her teenage years in the 1980s, when a ration book allowed her to buy one set of underwear a year and getting an abortion "is much more common than going to the dentist." She maintains that Cuban women have been empowered in various ways over the years, but laments that "today, female political leadership is still unthinkable."

Jon Lee Anderson remembers being an American writer in Cuba in the early 1990s, living in a house with no running water, dropping his daughters off at school to sing the Cuban revolutionary national anthem pronouncing "Yanquis [Yankees], the enemies of humanity" as he researched a biography of Che Guevara. Anderson describes returning to their house decades later with one of his daughters, gazing at the nearby spot where they once watched Cuban "rafters"―including their neighbor―plunge into the ocean in an attempt to escape.

Baseball, movies, music, Fidel and Raúl Castro, visits by Obama, the Rolling Stones and Pope Francis―all and more of these subjects are addressed. As author Patricia Engel's friend Manuel concludes, "Popes and presidents. They come and they see Cuba, then they leave and forget us. But for us, nothing changes. Here we are. Here we will always be . . . the same Cuba, the same ruta, the same struggle always."

For many, Cuba seems like a distant exotic cousin you've grown up hearing about but never been able to meet. Whether you're planning a visit or merely intrigued, Cuba on the Verge is a collection of 12 essays that offer an engrossing glimpse into this island nation and its endless dichotomies.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Hope, magic and family

Review by Alice Cary

Everyone needs a Mr. Gedrick in their lives, but especially 9-year-old Stanley Darrow and his family, who are reeling from the death of Stanley’s father. Stanley’s older brother and sister ignore him, while his architect mother flounders as she attempts to work from home. Meanwhile, the house is a mess, as no one has the energy or heart to take over the duties of the Darrows’ stay-at-home dad.

Healing begins when the Darrows’ self-appointed nanny, a strange man named Mr. Gedrick, suddenly appears on their doorstep—a Mary Poppins-like figure with a fuzzy green jacket and an odd little car he calls Fred. Initially wary, Stanley and his family can’t help but be amazed by the newcomer. Cleanup happens magically in minutes, with everyone working together with “a splish and a splash” or “a flick and a sniff.” Mr. Gedrick has secret projects in store for everyone in the family, giving them the courage to tackle huge hurdles that have become roadblocks since Mr. Darrow’s death, and helping them find the faith they need in themselves and each other in this new, dadless world.

Rare is the book that takes on weighty subjects like grief and loss with such grace, love and wonder, but Mr. Gedrick and Me by bestselling author Patrick Carman does all this and more while overflowing with marvelous fun.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Rare is the book that takes on weighty subjects like grief and loss with such grace, love and wonder, but Mr. Gedrick and Me by bestselling author Patrick Carman does all this and more while overflowing with marvelous fun.

NonfictionNature

The joys of jellyfish

Review by Alice Cary

Juli Berwald fell in love with the ocean during her junior year abroad in Israel, when, on a whim, she signed up for a weeklong marine biology course, snorkeling amid the coral reefs of the Red Sea. “It was as if I were Dorothy stepping into Oz,” she writes, remembering how her “world erupted in a kaleidoscope of colors, shapes, and textures.” She went on to receive a Ph.D. in ocean science, eventually becoming a science textbook writer.

Later, as a mother of two living in landlocked Austin, Texas, she “stumbled” upon jellyfish while working on a project with a National Geographic photographer. She became obsessed with the creatures, realizing that “to research jellyfish is not just to look at the creature unfamiliar and bizarre to most, but to study the planet and our place in it.”

Berwald shares her “crazy jellyfish adventure” in the fascinating Spineless. Reminiscent of Hope Jahren’s Lab Girl, Spineless reveals not only an around-the-world exploration of emerging science but also Berwald’s evolution as a science writer, learning to “write a book that matters,” as one jellyfish expert challenged her.

Are a series of jellyfish blooms simply a natural cycle, or are they a dire indication of global warming and increased ocean acidification? The answer, it turns out, is complicated. What’s more, jellyfish are both friend and foe—useful as food and possibly in medicine and engineering, but also the source of stings and a cause of major power plant-disrupting clogs.

As Berwald snorkels amid a jellyfish bloom in the Bay of Haifa, she watches a research photographer cavort with jellyfish like a dolphin. Readers can’t help but be swept away with enthusiasm as the researcher surfaces to say, “I love them so much. They’re like dancers.”

Full of humor and intrigue, Spineless is a seaworthy saga brimming with information about not only jellyfish but also about the health and future of the oceans and our planet.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Full of humor and intrigue, Spineless is a seaworthy saga brimming with information about not only jellyfish but also about the health and future of the oceans and our planet.

Children's & YAMiddle GradeGraphic Novels & Comics

Darkness on the edge of town

Review by Alice Cary

Young Pig lives in Sunrise Valley, but his world is filled with darkness in The Dam Keeper, the first of three graphic novels based on a 2015 Oscar-nominated short film. This riveting new story begins five years after the events in the film, focusing on an epic journey undertaken by Pig, his best and only friend, Fox, and her friend Hippo.

Pig is ostracized in his village, yet he keeps the town safe by operating an ingenious dam that his father built to keep a dark, deadly fog at bay. The fog killed Pig’s mother when he was a baby, and his father, seemingly crazed by grief, eventually walked out into the fog, apparently to his death. Pig, meanwhile, has become the self-sufficient, albeit lonely, dam keeper.

Pig is irritated, however, when Fox brings Hippo to see the dam. Hippo may be Fox’s friend, but he’s Pig’s archnemesis. During the visit a sudden tidal wave of fog blasts Pig, Fox and Hippo into the dangerous, desolate world beyond the dam, and they must band together to find their way back to safety before another wave of fog returns.

Dice Tsutsumi’s stunning illustrations bring a mesmerizing cinematic immediacy to Robert Kondo story, creating an ongoing interplay between light and dark, life and death, hope and despair. The stakes are high, as is the electric tension—this is by no means a book for the faint of heart. That said, Pig, Fox, and even the bullying Hippo are cute, lovable characters that will appeal to older elementary and middle grade students. Within its epic atmosphere, The Dam Keeper explores themes like fear, loneliness, friendship, bravery and bullying in complex, understated ways.

As the book closes, the cliffhangers couldn’t be higher. Might Pig’s father still be alive? Did Pig catch sight of him in the wilderness, leading the trio forward, or was he dreaming? Can the group trust a strange new creature named Van who promises to take them back to Sunrise Valley? And what will they find in a big new city they’re about to enter?

Readers will blaze their way through The Dam Keeper’s thrilling 160 pages and be champing at the bit for the next installment.

Young Pig lives in Sunrise Valley, but his world is filled with darkness in The Dam Keeper, the first of three graphic novels based on a 2015 Oscar-nominated short film. This riveting new story begins five years after the events in the film, focusing on an epic journey undertaken by Pig, his best and only friend, Fox, and her friend Hippo.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Living, working and learning

Review by Alice Cary

A new novel from Katherine Paterson about a fascinating, little-known chapter in Cuban history is reason to celebrate. Paterson—a Library of Congress “Living Legend” and two-time winner of both the Newbery Medal and the National Book Award—doesn’t disappoint with her first novel since her husband’s death in 2013.

It’s 1961, and 13-year-old Lora lives with her family in an apartment in Havana. Upon hearing about Fidel Castro’s campaign to make the nation literate in one year, Lora ignores her parents’ concerns and joins an army of young volunteer teachers (more than 250,000) heading into the remote countryside. There Lora and the other “brigadistas” live and work alongside poor families in primitive conditions. Lora gains self-confidence as she learns to love several families, experiencing the challenges and rewards of teaching both children and adults, all while facing grave danger.

Paterson seamlessly brings this tale to life, skillfully weaving in just enough historical detail to give curious readers a sense of the complex historical factors at play (Cubans’ delight and the United States’ displeasure at the fall of Baptista’s corrupt regime), with a helpful timeline of Cuban history. Castro’s bold campaign worked, making Cuba the first illiteracy-free country in the Western Hemisphere.

“We did it, we did it, we did it!” Lora and the brigadistas sing upon their triumphant return to Havana. Lora notes: “We were like an army of sharpened pencils marching into the center of the capital.”

Lora’s brigadista year transformed her life forever, as it did for many actual participants (one of whom is Paterson’s friend). In a wonderful epilogue written years later, after Lora becomes a doctor, she notes: “My country is not perfect, but, then, is yours? . . . No, we are not perfect, but we do have a literate, educated population. We do have doctors.” She adds that many doctors and nurses are heading to West Africa to care for Ebola victims.

As always, Paterson eloquently delivers a fascinating slice of history, then gives her readers important points to ponder, making My Brigadista Year a gloriously timeless story.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Katherine Paterson for My Brigadista Year.

This article was originally published in the October 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

A new novel from Katherine Paterson about a fascinating, little-known chapter in Cuban history is reason to celebrate. Paterson—a Library of Congress “Living Legend” and two-time winner of both the Newbery Medal and the National Book Award—doesn’t disappoint with her first novel since her husband’s death in 2013.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

A girl’s best friend

Review by Alice Cary

Watch out for Rosie, who is whip-smart but as mean as the snakes she tries to catch. During the summer before sixth grade, Rosie is as gruff and gritty as her grandfather and the town where they live. Rosie’s lawyer mother abandoned her as a baby, and life with Rosie’s dad was good until he had a serious stroke a year ago, leaving him so severely disabled that Rosie can’t bear to visit him in the rehab hospital. Rosie’s gnarly but loving grandpa stepped in, taking over her father’s doughnut store to try to eke out a living.

Rosie has little to be happy about in Chasing Augustus, Kimberly Newton Fusco’s spirited novel. Her grades have tanked, and her foremost goal is trying to find her misbehaving dog, Augustus, whom her mother gave away when her father had his stroke. For Rosie, losing Augustus was the crowning blow: “When you lose your dog, there’s a hole in your heart as big as the sun. Your head aches all the time and you are so empty inside because you are half the girl you used to be.” Rosie will do anything to find him, even break the law, and she’s pretty sure her dog is living on a farm with a woman known as Swanson, a town outcast who doesn’t speak and is rumored to shoot squirrels.

Helping in Rosie’s quest to find her dog—and herself—is a cast of quirky characters, including a withdrawn foster child named Philippe, an annoying chatterbox named Cynthia and a gifted sixth-grade teacher, Mr. Peterson, who challenges Rosie to open her heart and her mind.

There are no easy answers for Rosie, but through her own determination and with the help of a trusted few, she learns to find her way.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Rosie has little to be happy about in Chasing Augustus, Kimberly Newton Fusco’s spirited novel. Her grades have tanked, and her foremost goal is trying to find her misbehaving dog, Augustus, whom her mother gave away when her father had his stroke.

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