Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found
Jennifer Lauck conveys the perceptions, thoughts, and emotions of a  frightened child with utter conviction and vivid immediacy in her remarkable  memoir of the six years during which both of her parents died. Lauck opens in 1969,  when she is 5 and her 31-year-old mother is entering the final phase of a decade  of severe health problems. Momma is beautiful and loving; we feel the tender  intimacy between mother and daughter, even as we see that Jennifer has assumed a  lot of adult responsibilities that make her fearful and obsessed with rules.  Eight-year-old brother Bryan responds to Momma's illnesses with anger, and is  often cruel to his sister. High-powered, workaholic Daddy does his best, but  is not around a lot. (The adult author subtly depicts the kids' half-conscious  understanding that Daddy is seeing other women.) As Momma's health worsens and  the family moves to Southern California to be near a better hospital, Lauck  captures in painful detail the atmosphere of physical decay that surrounds a  mortally ill woman. Momma dies on Bryan's 10th birthday. In short order, Daddy  has moved them all in with Deb, who obviously has been his girlfriend for a  while, and events spiral down from there. Daddy dies of a heart attack before  Jennifer turns 10; Deb keeps the stepchildren (whom she dislikes) so that she  can get their social security allotment; Jennifer is sent out to work at a  residence that is run by Deb's creepy Freedom Community Church. She is 11 by the  time that her aunt and uncle rescue her--a moment that is nearly as exultant for readers  as it is for the girl whose trials they have shared for nearly 400 pages. Her  harrowing story might sound unrelievedly grim in the retelling, but Lauck's lack  of self-pity and the delicacy of her prose transform it into an odyssey of  endurance and transcendence.--Wendy Smith