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A Sensitive Portrait
of Children's Life in Foster Care
By Kim Boatman, Mercury
News
A novel for young readers about a child
cast adrift in the foster-care system could take plenty of wrong
turns. There's potential here for maudlin hand-wringing and the
sort of angst that typifies too much young adult fiction. But Santa
Cruz author Jill Wolfson deftly negotiates all these potential pitfalls
in delivering a warm and genuine first novel, "What I Call
Life.''
Through the person of one Carolina Agnes
London Indiana Florence Ohio Renee Naomi Ida Alabama Lavender, or
Cal Lavender for short, Wolfson offers insights about foster care,
the resiliency of the human spirit and how, in times of need, families
are sometimes stitched together under the most unlikely circumstances.
Wolfson, a former Mercury News writer and
editor, has written extensively about the juvenile justice and family
court systems. But her story this time is wisely personal and intimate,
told by Cal, a young girl whose world comes unraveled when her unstable
mother loses control in a public place and the authorities move
in to protect Cal. Her disbelief at finding herself in a foster
home neatly captures how not just children but plenty of adults
feel about their lives.
"Everyone is always living her story.
"When I first heard this, I thought:
What kind of nutty philosophy is that? Who would buy it? Everyone.
Always?
"All I had to do was look at my own
personal situation to see how wrongheaded this kind of thinking
happened to be. I looked around at where I was living at the time
and with whom I was living and shook my head. No, sir. This isn't
my story. This is nothing like my life.''
So begins "What I Call Life,'' and
Wolfson proceeds to neatly intertwine Cal's story with a back story
involving the orphan trains of the late 19th and early 20th century
that brought children to the Midwest and West from Eastern cities.
Just how the girls cope is part of the story,
too. Cal works furiously to control the environment around her,
presenting a facade to the world that includes "My Face for
Unbearably Unpleasant and Embarrassing Situations.'' Another girl
doesn't talk. A third invents a sister with whom she plans to reunite.
Together, under the wily, subtle guidance of a foster mother known
simply as the Knitting Lady, they and other girls in the home learn
to live their own stories.
There is wisdom to be found here, but Wolfson
doesn't smack her young readers over the head with newfound knowledge.
Instead, she delivers believable dialogue in a nicely paced, sensitive
book.
What I Call Life
By Jill Wolfson
Henry Holt, 272 pp., $16.95
Ages 10 and up
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