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Synopsis
It's the middle of summer in Mirabeau, Texas, but already Garnet Hubbard looks forward to fall — to entering seventh grade and becoming a teenager at last. With Opal, her beautiful and popular fourteen-year-old sister, as her guide, Garnet is sure to have a great year. But everything changes when their mother, Melanie, packs them up and heads for Nashville, determined to fulfill her lifelong dream of becoming a country singer. Almost before they know it, Melanie drops the girls at her sister's house in Oklahoma, assuring them she'll be back just as soon as she's settled in Tennessee. But when a few days turn into a few weeks and beyond, with no Melanie in sight, the girls begin to realize what has happened.
While Opal soon becomes one of the most popular girls in school, her younger sister struggles. For Garnet, getting used to her new life means trying to figure out how to have pride in herself when it seems she has little to offer the world and the odds are stacked against her. With only each other to lean on, Melanie's "precious gems" must learn to live with the hand they've been dealt and to accept the changing face of their family.
Set in the early 1960s and beautifully told by D. Anne Love, Semiprecious is a powerful, poignant, and often funny coming-of-age novel that will stay with readers long after the turn of the final page.
Children's Literature
In an authentic Texan voice, 14-year-old Garnet Hubbard describes the year she and her beautiful, popular older sister spent living with an aunt in a small town in Oklahoma, after their mother decided to pursue her dreams of stardom in Nashville. It is the school year 1960-61 and there are changes in society as disturbing as the changes in Garnet' s family. Her father is hospitalized. The school is unwelcoming. The disability checks do not come for months, and the family is embarrassingly poor. Two adults help Garnet through this difficult time: a "bohemian" art teacher who recognizes and encourages her talent and introduces her to radical Mexican painters, and her aunt's elderly Cherokee friend who provides worry dolls and a ride to scene painting after school, which involves her more in the school community. Over the course of the year, Garnet comes to realize that her mother really will not return, but that they can function as a family without her. The author gets the details of the early 1960s right, down to the atmosphere in the school and the societal unrest. Garnet is an engaging character, a child of the time, with appropriate attitudes and values. Her conflicted feelings about her mother and her dawning political sensibilities are realistic. An afterword explains a bit more about the political climate of the times and the radical Mexican painters. A positive look at family difficulties, set in a believable historical background. This is an enjoyable read.