You Are My Only by Beth Kephart
Emmy had one joy in life and that was Baby. Otherwise she was trapped in a violent marriage at age 20. So when Baby disappeared so did Emmy’s reason to live. After she is saved from committing suicide by standing on the train tracks, she is committed to a state institution because of her breakdown. Sophie is a teen who is kept hidden in her home by her mother. They have moved often, running away from the No Good. But as she looks out the window and meets Joey, his big dog, and his loving aunts, she is tempted to visit them for real. Once there, she finds a home that is filled with warmth, love, sweet treats, good books, and everything that is missing from her own. As their stories continue, readers will find themselves captured by the stories of a mother and daughter who lost each other long ago and are trying to find their way back to one another.
Kephart’s writing is breathtaking. She uses language that breaks through, explains, dances and delights. She can also use her words to create such sorrow, to build angst and amplify emotion until the reader is feeling it directly in their own skin. Here is one such paragraph on Page 13 just after Baby has been stolen:
My baby is gone. My baby is gone, and I should have called the police first thing. I should have had a decent, right-thinking thought in my head instead of growing desperate in the trees, draining the day of precious daylight with my every failing footstep. Peter came home to the red circle of the law’s lights, to the house torn inside out and bright with every watt we own. To dogs in the woods and yellow rivers of light. They told Peter right at the end of his second shift. He smells like refinery and trouble, like the smoke up and down the Delaware River.
She also builds characters in the same way, allowing us to see inside them and to understand them more deeply than they do themselves. The two female characters are both fragile to the point of fracturing, but also immensely strong in a way that is compelling and never tough. Their stories parallel one another, both being held against their will, both unsure of what the future will bring, and both of them recovering from loss.
I must also mention the wonderful characters of Miss Cloris and Miss Helen. At first they are assumed to be two sisters, but they are actually a lesbian couple. It is a story of love that is told in small moments, gentle connections, and the brilliance of their adoration for one another. It is also a lifetime of love, because they are both elderly and one is nearing death. They are exactly the sort of gay characters we need in our teen literature. They are beautiful, warm, nurturing and normal.
Teens will pick this book up for the story of a stolen baby and the tension of the mother and daughter finding one another. On the way, they will read a phenomenal book of loss, love, imprisonment and freedom. Mostly freedom. Appropriate for ages 13-15.
Reviewed from ARC received from Egmont.
Also reviewed by:
Waking Brain Cells 