One of my favorite reads of the year....

For as long as I can remember I have had a ridiculously romantic vision of lakeside resorts from the early to mid twentieth century. I love seeing pictures of people walking along lake shores and riding wooden speedboats and gathering on big wide verandas. It's the pictures I'm sure - they just look so wonderful and conjure up all those happy family ideals that I know are bunk but can never resist.

I just wanted to play cards on a veranda during a rainstorm I guess, with no distractions from television or telephone, just see the lake and drink lemonade and everyone loves everyone.*

Reading Molly Beth Griffin's lovely YA novel Silhouette of the Sparrow brought all of this back and more; I just inhaled this book and can't recommend it enough. It's set in 1926 on a lake in Minnesota with Garnet, who has been sent away from home as her parents struggle through a difficult time. The wealthy relative who's supposed to watch over her is her father's cousin and a major snob but Garnet is happy to be someplace faraway, someplace where she can think about all the changes about to come her way. (Should she marry the perfectly suitable boy back home who's threatening to propose, will her WWI vet father be okay, is she crazy to be dreaming of college?)

Garnet is a girl stuck in a strange period in American history, when women had the right to vote and hemlines were rising and anything seemed possible but marriage was the only truly acceptable path and motherhood was expected and college was still a distant dream for most. Garnet is like so many young women of her time - brave enough to imagine a different future but incapable of how to make it happen. Everything changes in Minnesota for her however, because in Minnesota Garnet meets Isabella and everything about the two of them together is just wonderful.

Plus Garnet is a silhouette artist who cuts amazing images of birds and wants to study the natural world in college, especially ornithology. How could you not adore her?

Here's just a snippet from the book that I loved:



"I looked over at Isabella - those perfect lips, that short hair starting to dry with little tufts sticking up at funny angles, those boyish clothes all rumpled and soaked. I wanted to tell her secrets I hadn't even told myself yet."

"...secrets I hadn't even told myself yet." Isn't that lovely and so perfectly what it is to be a teenage girl? Silhouette of the Sparrow will be formally reviewed in my July column; highly recommended for anyone who ever had a wistful heart...

*You would think reading Kate Atkinson's The Awakening would have cured me of the romantic view of such summertime resorts, but still I cling to it...just can't let go!