

The room was, yes, big, with cream-colored walls. Clearly, they wanted me to step in first. At some point Jamie, who had been leading this little tour, had stepped aside, leaving me in the doorway. It was only as I thought this that I realized we were all still standing there in the hallway, backed up like a traffic jam. Everything was big about where my sister and her husband, Jamie, lived-from the homes to the cars to the stone fence you saw first thing when you pulled into the neighborhood itself, made up of boulders that looked too enormous to ever be moved. A large, high window, on the other side of which were tall trees separating the huge backyard from that of the house that backed up to it. Instead, the first thing I saw was green. Usually they-and those that you knew best, for that matter-did not disappoint. With total strangers, it had always been my policy to expect the worst. Which was probably kind of unfair, but then again, I didn’t know my sister anymore, much less her decorating style. Ruffles or quilting, or maybe even appliqué.

“And finally,” Jamie said as he pushed the door open, “we come to the main event. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. When she needs it, and that she has something to offer others as well. Learns about Cora’s new life, what makes a family, how to allow people to help her Winds up living with her sister Cora, whom she has not seen for ten years, where she Summary: When she is abandoned by her alcoholic mother, high school senior Ruby LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Used by Permission of ALFRED PUBLISHING CO., INC. & SOUR GRAPES MUSICĪll rights administered by WB MUSIC CORP.Īll Rights Reserved. Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, Englandįirst published in 2008 by Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
