kgareis 's review for:

Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All by Laura Ruby

3.0

---

This is a coming of age story about young Italian girl, daughter of immigrants, growing up in a Catholic orphanage in Chicago during World War II. Frankie and siblings are abandoned by their father when their mother dies, but he still has enough money to bring them gifts and cook for them on visiting day??? (Explain that to me please) Then he marries another woman with her own family and takes them and his son out of the orphanage and moves to Colorado but not Frankie and her sister... (explain that to me please). Frankie is subjected to righteous (nonsensical and utterly abhorrent abuse by a crazed nun) and then kicked out. She and her sister have nowhere else to go but to live with their father (and new wife and additional creepy/rude stepsiblings) that moved back to Chicago. Our narrator is a ghost and ghost things are prevalent throughout, along with themes of young love, the war in the background and women suffering at the hands of basically everyone because they're women. I rooted wholeheartedly for Frankie, rolled my eyes at her sister and couldn't figure out why the ghost bothered me so much until her whole story came out in the last few chapters. All in all it was a bit too much to tackle here and left me sometimes confused when the scene switched back and forth.