Overview
One moment Janey is part of an average American family, and the next she's alone in the desert, watching her parents' car burn after a drunk driver swerved into their lane. When Janey wakes up later in the hospital, she finds her face bandaged and learns that her grandfather and great-aunt are to become her new family. She and her little sister, YoYo, are orphans. But almost worse is the fact that five-year-old YoYo is reveling in the spotlight of "poor little orphan" and her great-aunt seems more concerned with suing the drunk driver than with her parents' deaths. Janey decides that it's up to her to keep her parents' spirit alive and not let YoYo forget her real family. Yet as time passes and memories of the accident grow less painful, she gradually sees that her new family loves her as much as her old one, just in a different way.Twelve-year-old Janey tries to adjust in the aftermath of an automobile accident that kills her parents, severely injures her face, and forces her and her younger sister to move from Arizona to California to live with their grandfather and great-aunt.
Synopsis
One moment Janey is part of an average American family, and the next she's alone in the desert, watching her parents' car burn after a drunk driver swerved into their lane. When Janey wakes up later in the hospital, she finds her face bandaged and learns that her grandfather and great-aunt are to become her new family. She and her little sister, YoYo, are orphans. But almost worse is the fact that five-year-old YoYo is reveling in the spotlight of "poor little orphan" and her great-aunt seems more concerned with suing the drunk driver than with her parents' deaths. Janey decides that it's up to her to keep her parents' spirit alive and not let YoYo forget her real family. Yet as time passes and memories of the accident grow less painful, she gradually sees that her new family loves her as much as her old one, just in a different way.
Publishers Weekly
Warner (Sort of Forever) relays another moving story of loss and healing. An eerily quiet scene opens the story: a shocked 11-year-old discovers herself alone in the middle of the desert at night. Soon the girl, Janey, realizes that she and her five-year-old sister, YoYo, were thrown from the family car after a crash caused by a drunk driver; the girls' parents were killed. YoYo has escaped unscathed, physically, but Janey is injured and will need extensive plastic surgery to reverse the serious damage to her face. The girls are placed with their only relatives, their grandfather and his not terribly sympathetic younger sister, Aunt Baby, who share a house in California, far away from the girls' Arizona home. While there are other insightful, equally well-written novels with a similar premise, Warner's offers a twist Aunt Baby (who Janey overhears angrily telling a social worker, "If I'd wanted kids, I would have had them") aggressively pursues a civil lawsuit against the driver, with the aim of getting "compensation." While Aunt Baby claims, "This isn't about the money," the issue further complicates the grieving Janey's already conflicted feelings. Embarrassed and guilty that her grandfather can no longer afford to retire, she also knows that the court case is, in fact, about money. Although the resolution is just slightly too neat, it is also heartbreaking. Readers will be gripped. Ages 9-12. (Sept.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.