num_pages: 267
description: It is 1970 in a small town in California. Bean Holladay is twelve and her sister Liz is fifteen when their artistic mother Charlotte takes off to find herself leaving her girls enough money to last a month or two. When Bean returns from school one day and sees a police car outside the house she and Liz decide to take the bus to Virginia where their widowed Uncle Tinsley lives in the decaying mansion thats been in Charlottes family for generations. An impetuous optimist Bean soon discovers who her father was and hears stories about why their mother left Virginia in the first place. Money is tight and the sisters start babysitting and doing office work for Jerry Maddox foreman of the mill in town who bullies his workers his tenants his children and his wife. Liz is whip-smart--an inventor of word games reader of Edgar Allan Poe nonconformist but when school starts in the fall its Bean who easily adjusts and Liz who becomes increasingly withdrawn. And then something happens to Liz in the car with Maddox.Jeannette Walls has written a deeply moving novel about triumph over adversity and about people who find a way to love each other and the world despite its flaws and injustices.
language: English
title: The Silver Star
publisher: Scribner