A Big Dose of Lucky

by Marthe Jocelyn

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-4598-0668-9

249 pp.

Ages 12+

October 2015

"You may discover that going backward–discovering your past–will be the best route to the next chapter in your life." (pg. 31) 

This is what Malou, 16, is told as she and the other Seven girls in Orca’s Secrets books are released from the Benevolent Home for Necessitous Girls after a fire destroys it and they are given the barest of clues to their heritage.  Malou has never dreamed of having parents who might be monarchs or celebrities; she has only wanted an ordinary family that did things together.  The baby bracelet from St. Joseph's Hospital in Parry Sound with the name "Baby Fox" is her only clue to that family.  Though reluctant to leave, Malou heads by bus to Parry Sound, via Toronto, impressed by the diversity of people–her own skin colour had made her an anomaly in town where she was routinely identified as “the dark one or the little darkie or the colored girl” (pg.1)–and the newness of everything from pink popcorn to lemon meringue pie and grilled cheese.

In Parry Sound, Malou gets a bed at the local women's hostel and a job as a cleaner at the hospital, surprising considering her well-known untidiness at the Home, but "All it takes to be a cleaner? Don't be white." (pg. 70)  By way of a young orderly, Frankie, who shows an interest in her, Malou locates the stored records at the hospital and specifically the one for Sherry Fox who gave birth in 1948.  Along with an address, Malou finds a list of seven names which includes Sherry Fox's on the doctor's stationery and identified as A. B. cases.  Though her encounter with Sherry Fox, an Anishnaabe on the local reserve, reveals the bracelet was not Malou's but that belonging to, and taken from, Sherry's son Jimmy at birth, Malou makes an important connection with Jimmy and his classmate Pete and Pete's twin sister, Lucy, whose mother's name also appears on the list.

So begins a hunt by Malou and her new friends to locate the women whose names are on the list and find their connection.  A significant breakthrough comes from Pete's noting the physical similarity between Malou and a girl, Abby, who works summers at the marina.  And, with that, Malou and the other sixteen-year-olds are led to discover a program of artificial insemination at the hospital that involved an Jamaican intern named Andy Bannerman and probably others.  But this still does not reveal who Malou's mother may be.  Secrets long hidden may be being uncovered but it's only Sherry Fox's recollection of her own hospital visit that leads Malou to a mother she had long assumed dead.

The plotting by which Malou finds her mother is not as simple as that baby bracelet initially suggests, and for that I am thankful.  I should have given Marthe Jocelyn far greater credit, having read enough of her other books, including her young adult titles like How It Happened on Peach Hill (2007), Would You (2008), Folly (2010) and What We Hide (2014), to know the depth of her writing and the complexity of her storylines.  That plot is intense but secondary for me compared to Malou's experiences to become part of a world outside of the Benevolent Home for Necessitous Girls. Having  lived within the sheltered confines of the Home, Malou had little understanding, except via Joe the cook's small television, to glimpse the world of racial discrimination and the civil rights movement and multiculturalism, and her few experiences in town did little to expose her to all that world entailed.  Her discovery of the world and the freedoms that come with her departure from the Home are as much an eye-opener for the reader as they are for Malou.  She learns many things, none less than the price one must pay for freedom.

Freedom is harder than I expected.  Not the freedom part, but the making-decisions part.  Having a choice. (pg. 121)

All the girls in the Secrets series define themselves at the onset as orphans of the Benevolent Home for Necessitous Girls.  But ultimately, Malou learns “I’m not an orphan.  Not even half.” (pg. 249) and that she is very fortunate–there's A Big Dose of Lucky–having a family that is far more inclusive than ever imagined, except by Marthe Jocelyn.


SH...H...H...
Other books in the Secrets series are:

• Innocent by Eric Walters 
• My Life Before Me by Norah McClintock (Reviewed here)
• Shattered Glass by Teresa Toten (Reviewed here)
• Small Bones by Vicki Grant (Reviewed here)
• Stones on a Grave by Kathy Kacer
• The Unquiet Past by Kelley Armstrong

Small Bones

Written by Vicki Grant
Orca Book Publishers
978-1-45980-653-5
256 pp.
Ages 12+
September 29, 2015
Reviewed from audiobook
978-1-4598-1098-3

We’ve probably all wanted to reinvent ourselves but Dorothy (Dot) Blythe probably has more reasons than most.  With the Benevolent Home for Necessitous Girl burned down and the eldest seven girls being sent away, with only a few scraps to help them determine their heritage, Dot doesn’t have that much to hold onto.  So it’s not surprising that when, dressed in a fine suit donated by the wealthy Mrs. Welsh, Dot does not reveal her orphan background to the young man, Eddie Nicholson, whom she meets on the train.  Eddie helps get her to the Dunbrae Arms, a lodge where she needs to get a job, after having been robbed of her money and finding her destination, a men’s clothing store named Howell’s of Buckminster, closed.  Seems the town of Buckminster is her go-to place for answers, being the name on the cashmere overcoat in which she had been swaddled when deposited at the Home.  Other than a few barely legible initials and a tiny silver spoon with a crest, Dot doesn’t have much to go on.  So with no money and Howell’s closed, she gets a job a a seamstress at the Dunbrae Arms.  And there she pursues her history, asking questions of the snarly Mrs. Smees, who runs the housekeeping for the lodge, and Bas Simmonds, the laundry man, as well as Eddie who seems to know everyone and begins to spend time with Dot.

But, it is evident that Dot’s small frame and face remind others of someone but the confusion  or even anger her presence evokes is never clear to her.   And then she is invited to a summer party to commemorate ByeBye Baby, the unexplained discovery of a tiny baby in the woods seventeen years earlier.  A baby that was seen but disappeared before help arrived.  Knowing she must have been that baby, Dot encourages Eddie to pursue the story–he is a summer reporter for the Buckminster Gleaner–so that she too might learn everything she can about that baby and the mystery surrounding it.  And I haven’t even mentioned the small bones that begin to appear around the seamstress’ cabin where Dot rooms.  Fragile, incomplete, and mysterious bones, probably those of birds.

Vicki Grant weaves a loaded story about a pregnancy that was kept hidden and a birth that was obscured from small-town gossip and yet so important as Dot’s seemingly insignificant origins.  The cover up about her birth may have been haphazard but it was effective in keeping the truth concealed.  And yet many individuals knew a little something about the event.  Some knew better than to talk about it, afraid of ruffling feathers, but others just didn’t realize that they knew anything important.  With astute questioning and biding her time, Dot is able to piece her story together from a patchwork of details, and though her story may have been a tad frayed around the edges–she does jump to a few incorrect assumptions–it is heart-warmingly trimmed with a happy ending or two.  In fact, Vicki Grant, with her light-touch and say-it-straight writing manner, makes sure that it’s “Better than any fantasy” (pg. 239) that Dot could ever have imagined.

Shattered Glass

by Teresa Toten

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-459810976 (pbk)

256 pp.

Ages 12+

September 29, 2015

Reviewed from audiobook

978-1-459810969

"Kid, your life makes mine look like a beige wall."

These words, spoken by sixteen-year-old Toni's Yorkville landlady, Grady, could not be truer, though surprising, considering the colourful and perhaps tragic circumstances of Lady Grady's own life.  But Toni, whose life has been turned upside-down by a fire at the orphanage she has lived at for the past 14 years, has a story as complicated and heartbreaking as any of the songs that Teresa Toten uses to title her chapters.

Toni, who has been plagued by nightmares of fire and smoke and cuts, is one of eldest seven at the Benevolent Home for Necessitous Girls, who is given a few bits of paper as clues to her heritage and some money to start a new and independent life for herself.  For Toni, these bits include a yellowed menu, a playbill from a club named Willa’s in Toronto, and the discharge paper detailing her hospital visit immediately prior to her arrival at the Home.  For the first time, Toni knows her name, Antoinette Royce, and her mother’s, Halina Royce.

But her first order of business is to get herself settled, which she promptly does finding a room at Grady Vespucci’s and a job waitressing at the Purple Onion café, both in Yorkville.  As reliable and hard-working as Toni may be, she is determined to be “smart and fearless and sassy” (pg. 27) and begins to search for her father, seeing him first in folk singer Ian Tyson, of Ian and Sylvia fame, and then in Brooks Goldman, the lead musician of the Purple Onion’s band and father of Ethan, a young man who seems to take an interest in Toni and watches out for her.  But Toni’s quest for her family is a difficult one, as she harbours a fear that her mother is responsible for the fire and for the injuries she incurred before she ended up at the Benevolent Home for Necessitous Girls.  And she keeps letting her imagination take her off the beaten path to identify her father.

In addition to Grady and Big Bob, the owner of the Purple Onion, Ethan and his father Brooks, Toni becomes acquainted with a handsome young man who runs another club, flattered by the attention he bestows upon her.  Sadly, just as Toni misinterprets so much about her own life history, she sees Cassidy as a potential love interest, oblivious to the messages she should be getting about him but is naively ignorant.  As desperate as Toni is to find some closure to her past–“The shadows cripple you” (pg. 162)–she can’t see the family she is building around her, with a motley group of individuals who all care about her, regardless of her origins or naiveté.  Fortunately, set to an awesome selection of music embedded in her story, Toni is able to learn her true story, though it is a sad one.

Teresa Toten gets the reader in the gut with Shattered Glass. Imagine a young girl who is convinced her mother is no good and in looking for her father convinces herself she’s found him, more than once!  Without ever intending it, Toni creates her story and continues to revise it as the facts come to light.  Still Teresa Toten allows Toni the freedom to be strong and forthright while letting a sliver of hope about her father add an undersong to her present life.  It’s a compelling story, Toni’s and Shattered Glass, that is never obvious nor predictable but rather sweeping as it carries Toni and the reader along to a satisfying conclusion.  As the Rolling Stones sang just a few years later, “You can't always get what you want, But if you try sometime you find, You get what you need. “  Toni does.

My Life Before Me

by Norah McClintock

Orca Book Publishers

978-1459806627

248 pp.

Ages 12+

September 29, 2015

Cady Andrews has dreamed of being a newspaper reporter and when her home, the Benevolent Home for Necessitous Girls, burns down, the story she is going to pursue is her own.  Just like the other six older girls–Toni, Sara, Betty, Tess, Malou and Dot–from the Home who must set out on their own, Cady is given clues to her identity or heritage.  Though she wants to reject it at first, hopeful of a new and exciting life, totally different than the pathetic one of twice-orphaned Cady Andrews, she takes that single clue–a yellowed newspaper clipping of a photo of the vandalized tombstone of Thomas Jefferson who died in 1948 in Orrenstown, Indiana–as the means to grab the attention of the Toronto newspaper editor who thinks the newspaper office is no place for young women.  

But it’s 1964 and it’s a time of the growing civil rights movement and a time of anger by those who can’t abide change.  Not surprising Cady’s questions in Orrenstown and then in Freemount where the grave is located draw a lot of attention. From the  three old men whom she meets at the diner, one of whom becomes her go-to person for local info, Sheriff Bradley Hicks who keeps popping up, a black youth named Daniel and his mother Lila Jefferson, and Maggie Nearing, who runs the local newspaper and the rooming house where Cady stays, Cady gets everyone gossipping and sometimes answering her questions.  Though she learns that Thomas Jefferson had been imprisoned for killing a white man and died while trying to escape, the story details seem to take on different perspectives depending on with whom she is speaking.  And his status as a war hero seemed to rub some people the wrong way.

What Thomas Jefferson, a black man, has to do with blond, blue-eyed Cady is not readily evident, but as with any crime story, a little bit of digging goes a long way to uncovering a few bones and ultimately some skeletons that many would have preferred left hidden.  In fact, some locals are threatened by Cady’s interest in the story as evident by threats she endures because of her enquiries.  Luckily she’s a determined and clever young woman and follows her single clue from one lead to another, meeting more and more people, and revealing an overwhelming racial discrimination and a story of murder, lies and corruption.  That clue may have been given to her to help find her family, but it’s probably more important in what she learns about herself.

But I promised myself that I would never commit the same sin.  I would never be afraid to do the right thing.  I didn’t want to go through life hating myself or regretting decisions. (pg. 242)

There’s a great reason that Norah McClintock is the queen of YA crime writing and I’m so impressed with the story she was able to create within the premise of the Secrets series and still accommodate a plot involving murder, mystery, and civil rights.  My Life Before Me demonstrates that our lives are more than the total of our own experiences; they are also shaped by experiences before our own births.  That single newspaper clipping clue about a man of no relation to Cady is able to open the doors to her past and her origin, though never obvious or confusing.  She will learn from whence she came, though her birth is neither a happy nor a horrific story.  But the story in which her birth is embedded is greater than her own, because it tells of a society that was hurtful and dishonest and prejudiced, and in 1964 still only starting to change for the better.  Moreover,  Norah McClintock easily places the reader in a different time–a time in which skin colour sadly mattered and justice was not always so.  And yet, readers will be impressed by Cady’s strength of character, regardless of the roadblocks constantly placed in her way, and the way she faced adversity with wisdom and poise.

Never spit into a well you may need to drink from. (pg. 7)

And even though much of the mystery regarding Thomas Jefferson skirts Cady’s own story, she makes it into a story that was important to tell and share, for a good greater than her own need.  I truly hope that Cady will continue to be given voice by  Norah McClintock as I think they both have lots more important ideas and stories to share, whether about being given to the orphanage for a second time or about the new life she makes for herself as a newspaper reporter.  Lots for more stories to be told, I’m sure.

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Something special as part of the Secrets blog tour!

Read my interview with author Norah McClintock about her writing and her new book My Life Before Me in my next post today.

Secrets Blog Tour is coming!

Sh-h-h...  but tell everyone:

Secrets

to be revealed

September 29, 2015

The newest series of seven books, orchestrated by Eric Walters for Orca Book Publishers, is on its way, ready to tell the seven concurrent stories of seven young women raised at the Benevolent Home for Necessitous Girls in the town of Hope, Ontario.  The year is 1964.  When a fire rips through the building, the seven oldest girls–Toni, Sara, Betty, Tess, Malou, Dot and Cady–are each given an envelope with some things, perhaps clues, from their pre-orphanage days.  And therein lie the stories of Secrets.

And if you're the only one who hasn't seen the fantastic notice for the series, here it is:

Starting next Tuesday, blogs across the internet will host the blog tour for the release of Secrets.  I'm pleased to announce that I will be hosting a review of My Life Before Me and a Q & A with the book's author, Norah McClintock.  I was thrilled to be asked and delighted to share the honour with readers of CanLit for LittleCanadians.

Here are the list of books and their stops on the blog tour:

Innocent 
by Eric Walters

Hosted by Lost in a Great Book
Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Shattered Glass
by Teresa Toten

Hosted by Spellbound Book Reviews
Wednesday, September 30, 2015

The Unquiet Past
by Kelley Armstrong

Hosted by Ya Book Shelf
Thursday, October 1, 2015

Stones on a Grave
by Kathy Kacer

Hosted by teenreads
Friday, October 2, 2015

My Life Before Me
by Norah McClintock

Hosted by CanLit for LittleCanadians
Saturday, October 3, 2015

A Big Dose of Lucky
by Marthe Jocelyn

Hosted by Lost in a Great Book
Sunday, October 4, 2015

Small Bones
by Vicki Grant

Hosted by Pop! goes the reader
Monday, October 5, 2015






Mark September 29-October 5 on your calendar and please join me and others in celebrating the release of a series that is sure to get readers (ages 12+) excited about reading, a different era, and the secrets that make for great stories.

Seven the Series: News about Sequels and Secrets

Seven the Series, Orca Book Publishers' tremendously successful set of adventures for young readers, has sold over 100,000 books and is now looking to the future.  Introduced over two years ago, Seven the Series tells the stories of the seven grandsons of adventurer David McLean upon his death.  The seven teenagers–D.J., Steve, Spencer, Bunny (a.k.a. Bernard), Rennie, Jim (a.k.a. Webb) and Adam–are sent on different missions by their grandfather, as relayed in packages presented to each by their grandfather's lawyer.  The series, the brainchild of author Eric Walters, includes the following seven books, written by seven of Canada's best writers of children's fiction:

• Between Heaven and Earth by Eric Walters;
• Lost Cause by John Wilson;
• Jump Cut by Ted Staunton;
• Ink Me by Richard Scrimger;
• Close to the Heel by Norah McClintock;
• Devil's Pass by Sigmund Brouwer; and
• The Last Message by Shane Peacock.

VII VII VII VII VII VII VII VII VII VII

Next?
The wildly successful series will be followed by seven more books by the same seven authors and called The Seven Sequels.  Set for release this October (2014), here's Orca's blurb about the series:

New secrets will be brought to light…
When a visit to their grandfather’s cottage leads to the astonishing discovery of a hidden cache of passports and foreign currency, the grandsons from the bestselling Seven (the series) begin to suspect that their beloved grandfather was a spy, or even worse, a double agent. Determined to unearth the true story of their grandfather’s mysterious past, the seven cousins set off on seven new adventures that will take readers from the depths of the Caribbean sea to the top of the London Eye. (Retrieved from http://blog.orcabook.com/the-adventures-continue/ on February 27, 2014.)

Eric Walters' sequel is called Sleeper but that is the only title I know.

A book trailer released by Orca Book Publishers on March 12, 2014 to YouTube can be viewed on our Book Trailers blog here.



VII VII VII VII VII VII VII VII VII VII

And More?
Yes.  Not to let the grass grow under his publishing feet, Eric Walters has put together an outstanding team of female Canadian authors to pen another seven books in a series called Seven Secrets. The premise behind these books is as follows:

Seven girls in an orphanage in 1964 are each given a clue to their past that sends them on an adventure. (Retrieved from Kelley Armstrong's blog on March 1, 2014.)

(This is not an official logo, only my own graphic.)

Set for release in the fall of 2015, Seven Secrets has Eric Walters joining these grand dames of youngCanLit (listed here with a sampling of their books):

• Teresa Toten (The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B, The Taming, Me and the Blondes)
• Marthe Jocelyn (How It Happened on Peach Hill, Folly, Mable Riley, Would You) 
• Kelley Armstrong (The Summoning, The Gathering, Loki's Wolves, Sea of Shadows) 
• Vicki Grant (The Puppet Wrangler, Pig Boy, Quid Pro Quo, Not Suitable for Family Viewing) 
• Kathy Kacer (Hiding Edith, The Diary of Laura's Twin, Clara's War, Shanghai Express) 
• Norah McClintock (Taken, Not a Trace, Guilty, Victim Rights) 

Again, few details about the Seven Secrets have been released except that Eric Walters' contribution is titled Innocent and Kelley Armstrong's protagonist is named Tess.


As more news is released, I will be sure to share.