Seventh Garment
The first voice is from a tree: "In the old days, the maidens from the distant North would come and we would talk together. Then came the priestesses, clad in white, with their copper gongs, and garlands in their hair. In their white robes, they would lie down and wait and listen for the whispering of my leaves." The next voice is that of Roula, who lives in Athens: "My mother always used to say that you can tell a bad day from the way it starts. Well, she wasn't wrong." Out in the Greek countryside where Roula's relatives live, other voices speak - those of Eleni and her mother, who live near the tree. Through the course of the book, the voices come together to tell the story of suffering of the women and men of Greece. Eleni's mother loved her husband, the man who stroked her belly and painted pictures all over her body, but the Turks killed him and his severed head landed in the water near her boat. Eleni is one of eight children her mother later conceived with him , the man who raped her, knowing she had no place else to go.  A death brings the family together and, following tradition, Eleni becomes the spiritual medium for seven generations of male family members. The stories of dead men combine with the voices of living women to relate a history of Greece dating back to the 1820s.-- For great reviews of books for girls, check outLet's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. --From500 Great Books by Women; review by Erica Bauermeister