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"A journey into Mark Twain country . . . Like Huck Finn, the novel is about magic and secrets, enslavement and escape. Graceanne's passage down the river into awareness is lyrical, painful and ultimately uplifting. It is a beautiful book."
Publishers Weekly says, "Small-town life in 1960s Missouri is conveyed with elegaic grace in this poignant coming-of-age tale." In writing This is Graceanne's Book, P. L. Whitney evocatively shows how much children can teach us about our humanity and calls for a greater understanding and appreciation of children. The story is told by a nine-year old boy, Charlie, who observes with a keen eye and an encompassing awe a pivotal year in the life of his older sister Graceanne. She's loud, intellectual, and a ruthless physical and psychological daredevil, a girl whose ferocious exploits are the stuff of local legend in Cranepool's Landing and the stuff of all that Charlie aspires to be. He narrates Graceanne's painful passage into a teenager, a passage made tempestuous by their violent mother. From the ritual bonfire whose ashes are used to paint Charlie's forehead, to a system of childhood justice that sets aside the weaker youngsters as "dead kids," to an experiment in ice-carving that attempts to turn the baby Jesus into a "Negro," Graceanne invents a world in Cranepool's Landing with an imagination so fertile that it mirrors the rich landscape of which they are a part. It is Graceanne's fierce creativity that allows these two children to survive an abusive mother and the community that turns a blind eye to their circumstances. |
An acclaimed writer of two mystery series, P. L. Whitney has turned to a new genre to write the story of her heart. This is Graceanne's Book is the affecting story of two extraordinary children – characters who leap off the page with gusto.
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Amazon.com |
Although just thirteen herself, Graceanne will protect her younger brother, Charlemagne, from the terrifying and arbitrary power of adults--with poetry and magic, kingfisher stories and Elvis records, ice babies and cornstalk silk, scarecrows and arrowheads, a Catechism of the Mackerel and the Miracle of Our Lady of Fort McBain. In the book of wonders Graceanne braids out of their childhood games, Charlie learns to swim, not only in the swollen river, but all the way to Mars. This wonderful novel belongs on the shelf and in the heart next to Toni Morrison’s SULA.”