From Publishers Weekly
Taking the form of the diary of a na‹ve 11-year-old girl growing up in 1960s West Texas, this emotionally complex story entertains, frustrates and tugs at the heartstrings. Wyse's simply written tale is alive with the raw honesty and humorously candid observations of farm girl Lou Ann Campbell as she struggles to make sense of her family's ever-increasing dysfunction. Her neurotic mother, who has suffered through five miscarriages, is pregnant again but is still downing beer by the six-pack. Lou Ann's father is no better, carrying his sexual exploits from outside the home into his daughter's bedroom. As the emotional distance between Lou Ann and her older brother, Will, increases by the day, she finds herself with only five small dolls to talk to and the scattered pieces of paper that make up her secret diary to confide in. The dolls, which she keeps in a shoebox and takes out only when she is alone, represent her five unborn siblings, each with its own persona. As her story progresses, Lou Ann finds human friendship with a pen pal from Oklahoma City, one of the older boys hired to help with the wheat harvest and to her mother's grave disapproval the daughter of a Mexican prostitute. Wyse captures the voice of her young protagonist with remarkable skill and naturalness, from her innocent fantasies ("I wish we knew how to do acrobatics together or sing all in harmony so we could go on TV as a big famous family") to her bleakest moments ("My eyes are flat. All they are doing is looking out"). The novel's conclusion can only just be construed as hopeful, but Lou Ann's hardheaded (and hard-won) optimism rings true.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
"I will have to be careful," Lou Ann Campbell begins her diary. "Mother hunts through my room to make sure I'm not hiding things from her." The Box Children is the story of a twelve-year-old girl living on a Texas wheat farm. Her only friends are the Box Children, five tiny dolls she has named after her lost siblings-babies her mother has miscarried. This summer, Lou Ann's mother is pregnant again, but Lou Ann can already sense that something is wrong. As her mother's grasp on reality slips away, she must rely on her own wit and courage to make sense of adolescence.
Lucid and startlingly frank,
The Box Children is a simple but stirring, tough but tender story about growing up. As Lou Ann emerges-a clear-eyed and spirited girl, struggling to see beyond her life with a cruel mother and a stifling father, beyond life on the farm, to the possibilities of a wide world-she will stake a firm claim in the hearts of readers.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
