When Meryl Lee's best friend is killed suddenly in a car accident, she finds she can't face going back to school. Her parents decide she needs a new start, so they arrange for her to attend a catholic girl's school in Maine. At first the school is terrible. The other girls come from wealthy backgrounds, and Maryl Lee feels like she will never fit in. Then she meets Matt, a boy who has been on his own since his own parents disappeared when we was only 6 or 7. When a kindly school administrator encourages the friendship between the two misfits, things start to change. As they both come to deal with their fear and grief, they are able to reach out to other students at the school until they form a ring of love and support. Their new security is threatened by something in Matt's past, and something in Meryl Lee's future. Will their friendship weather he gale-force winds that threaten it?
I am pretty much willing to read anything Gary Schmidt has written. His book, Pay Attention, Carter Jones is one of my favorite books of the last decade. I liked this book as well, but not as much as some of the others I have read by Schmidt. There was something about the voice of the main character, Meryl Lee, that felt stilted and slowed down the narrative. Though the story had the heartfelt warmth of other Schmidt books, it dragged, and I kept feeling like I wanted it to hurry up and get on with the story. The most redeeming element was several laugh-out-loud boarding school hijinks sequences that didn't really move the story forward, but that were just lots of fun. I also thought the main message--that things can just as suddenly go better as they can suddenly get worse-- is a strangely comforting idea. (400p. 2021)
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