A powerful YA novel that explores the legacy of deep family secrets and cultural heritage.
Seventeen-year-old Odella is haunted by family secrets. Why doesn't her great-aunt Gloria visit anymore? Why does her mother, Sally, drink so much? Sally's tragic car accident on a frozen lake when she was sixteen seems to have cast a spell over her life that no one can break. Odella tries to hold her family together, but when her mother runs off, the family is left reeling. Then Odella meets Jimmy Tomasson, whose dreams of prophetic flying fish seem to have led him to her. In the heat and tenderness of their deepening feelings and in his belief in her, Odella begins to find the strength to unravel the web of secrets that has ensnared them all.
Reviews
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Katie MacNichol portrays the tangled lives of three women who are impacted by love, secrets, and death. As a teen, Sally was the sole survivor of a tragic car accident on Mistik Lake. Now her daughter, Odella, must cope with her mother's alcoholism and then with her abandonment. Sally's Aunt Gloria tries to hold the family together while hiding the secret of her own lesbian love life. The mysteries that are eventually unveiled about each woman draw the survivors closer. MacNichol handles the varying points of view beautifully, fully revealing characters, and even depicts settings as if they were characters. MacNichol's characters age gracefully in voice--except for Odella's whiny youngest sibling, whose tone is irritating but understandably so in view of her mother's abandonment. D.P.D. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
