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shirleytupperfreeman's review
I love the way Christian Kiefer gets at the heart of his characters - all very different but all living, loving, learning and grieving in a small Ohio town which has 'seen better days.' There is only 1 factory left in town and it is owned by a Pakastani immigrant - a fact causing both appreciation and resentment. One family is grieving the recent loss of their baby. All the families are doing their best trying to make ends meet. The story is told in many voices - teenager and parent, young adult and older adult, brown, black and white, factory owner and factory worker, religious and not. It's a touching and hopeful story about building connection in spite of difference.
nixieknox's review against another edition
4.0
While I liked most of the characters in this (all the ones I'm supposed to), in my heart I am here for Mary Lou. "Her team made her want to do better, to be better, not in a way that felt like shame but instead like care, perhaps even love." As a fat middle-aged soon-to-be-divorced woman who was, throughout my life but especially as a teenager, not at all encouraged to spend any time thinking about my clothes or my looks as a form of self-expression or fashion, I have struggled with allowing myself to care about my appearance with any sense of value. Like I'm not worthy of having nice things and they shouldn't be important to me anyway. But my loved ones have made me feel exactly this in so many way that I wept when I read this one simple sentence.
Everyone in this book is struggling in one way or another, very average, almost mundane, familiar ways. Racism, poverty, drug addiction, death, child abuse, it's all here, but the book was not depressing. It was just hopeful enough at the end to be satisfying, but not too much so I wanted to roll my eyes.
The middle got kind of slow and I almost lost interest, but I am so glad I hung in there.
Everyone in this book is struggling in one way or another, very average, almost mundane, familiar ways. Racism, poverty, drug addiction, death, child abuse, it's all here, but the book was not depressing. It was just hopeful enough at the end to be satisfying, but not too much so I wanted to roll my eyes.
The middle got kind of slow and I almost lost interest, but I am so glad I hung in there.