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No Comments Doing It Anyway
I really don’t have the brain power to focus on this review, but guess what? I’m doing it anyway. Not, you understand, out of an excess of zeal or anything; it’s just that Jamie Sumner’s Maid for It was due and not renewable at the library on Tuesday and (clearly) needs to be returned, and I can’t actually bring myself to put it back on hold again just so I can put off reviewing it AGAIN. (After all, it was a read-aloud with my 15-year-old, and we finished it weeks ago.) I was going to do it Wednesday but went Christmas shopping instead, since my youngest was finally back in school after the flu; today my 15-year-old is home for her second day, so I’m available (and desperately hoping no one else will get it).
Alrighty then, folks, here we go. Maid for It has plenty of heart–all of Sumner’s books do–and that heart helps readers through a difficult topic. Remember Dusti Bowling’s Across the Desert? Maid for It also features a daughter struggling with her mother’s addiction to painkillers, only Franny’s mom finally got clean; she’s stayed clean, too, except that when she gets into a car accident (one that isn’t even her fault!), her thigh injury means a prescription for painkillers, and Franny is terrified. Not only is there the danger of her mother falling off the wagon, so to speak; she also can’t work, which means that there’s not going to be money for hospital bills. In desperation, Franny takes over her mother’s housecleaning business on the sly, except that the extra work is about to drown her. Franny manages to arrange help from an unexpected source, but that’s about the time her carefully controlled life starts to seriously unravel.
My 15-year-old and I were completely into this one. She wanted me to read every chance we got–I love it when that happens!–and we got through it in record time. How Franny and her mom find their way through the newest crisis in their lives is a story that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit while tugging firmly at your heartstrings; it’s also a poignant reminder that people are complicated, and their worst is never the sum total of who they are. I highly recommend this one.
In the meantime, I’m praying that the plague stops here and that we can juggle and manage the important parts of Christmas successfully. Here’s hoping everyone else’s households stay healthy!