The Same Sky

Juxtaposing Carla, living in extreme poverty in Honduras, with Texan, Alice, who has struggled with the fact that she is unable to bear children and has endured failed surrogacy and adoption attempts, this book illustrates two people who appear to be different in every way yet share “the same sky.”  Amanda Eyre Ward’s writing style is blunt.  Harsh.  Nothing is glossed over and rarely relieved with lightness or humor .  The sharp edges of aching grief and desperate need stand in stark relief against a background that offers little hope in any way, shape or form– for a long stretch of pages.  This is a work of fiction, based on gruesome realities and interspersed with occasional crude language (I still wonder when and why the f-word has become acceptable.  I would be happy to never see or hear it again).  On page 76 of 276 pages, I just wanted it to be over.  But I’m reading it as a book club selection for my Chapter Chicks group, so I pressed on.  Plus I wanted to know what happens and how Carla and Alice’s lives end up intersecting.

Note: spoiler alert for the upcoming paragraphs!

Gradually the characters develop more complexity.  Carla urgently needs to get her little brother out of Honduras.  He started sniffing glue at the age of 6, and she knows that this addiction has signed his death warrant unless she can rescue him immediately.

I closed the padlock and lay next to Junior, my arm around his small body.  I knew then what the end of hope smelled like:  yellow glue on your brother’s breath.

She boldly throws her lot in with Ernesto, a young gang member she just met who has agreed to try to escort Carla and Junior around the law and through several borders to reach Carla’s mother who lives as an illegal immigrant in Austin, Texas.  They will risk their lives to ride The Beast (El tren de la muerte– the death train), which means clinging to the top of a hurtling freight train along with murderers, rapists, and other desperate children and adults for 1,450 miles.

Of course Alice and her husband also live in Austin.  We know that her mother died when she was a child, and that she survived breast cancer in her college years.  After a heart-wrenching failed adoption she decides to try to fill the childless void in her life by agreeing to take on a “little sister” from the local high school.  Evian is 15 years old and her life is a mess.  Alice is immediately in over her head.  She no longer believes God has a plan for her life– or anyone else’s.

I didn’t believe there was a plan.  Look at Evian, for C__ ‘s sake.  What was the plan for her?  God had given her a s__ mother, then hooked her up with someone like me, who hadn’t a clue about how to help her…. I felt angry and impotent.  But then I thought– why not?  I wanted to take care of someone, and Evian sure as h__ needed care.

And so the book continues from one distressing or heart-breaking situation to the next.  But the characters are gradually finding out what they want and need and what’s important.  Clara finds out that being in America does not solve every problem.  Alice discovers that maybe her life can be fulfilling even without a baby.  Then suddenly, very suddenly, the story ends with new beginnings for everyone.  I wasn’t ready yet.  For the end.  Fortunately there was a short epilogue set many years after the ending of the main story.  It helps.

I felt the thread that bound us, that ran from the graves of your ancestors north, through Mexico to Texas…. A thread of blood.  A vein of grace.

This is a story worth reading.  It’s uncomfortable.  It contrasts the “haves” with the “have-nots.”  It shines a light on why illegal aliens risk life and limb to come to America.  We see that even though we don’t see or understand God’s plan, it is still there.  It paints a picture of what faith can mean to different people and what it takes to be happy.  One particular quote from Carla encapsulates this idea:

I know how privilege sounds:  haughty, a bit loud, incensed by imagined slights.  Americans don’t seem to laugh as much as we do, in my family.  Maybe they haven’t been forced to see the worst of human nature, to know the true value of joy.

At the very least, The Same Sky has encouraged me to pull gratitude out of my privilege.

 

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Reading is a cherished pastime for me.  I enjoy language that flows, that expresses ideas and emotions like music, that paints a picture of what is, what was or what could be.  Mid-20th-Century writer Betty Smith uses words beautifully in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  While reading this book, I entered the world of young Francie Nolan’s Brooklyn of the 19-oughts and 19-teens.  Her world was gritty, impoverished, cold and lonely.  It was full of hardship and longing.  But it was also brimming over with rich experiences of courage, hard work, overcoming and survival through sheer determination.

Francie’s father, Johnny, was a dreamer, a singing waiter who brought light, love and music into their home.  His nickname for Francie was Prima Donna.  He was also an alcoholic, so he spent money on booze while his wife and children lived cold and hungry.  Katie, Francie’s mother, was of hardy stock.  She worked hard to keep a roof over their heads and subsistence level food on the table.  She also instilled in her children the desire to read and learn and be able to stand on their own.

The Rommelys ran to women of strong personalities.  The Nolans ran to weak and talented men.

The story progresses its way though the Nolan family’s life with abundant descriptive detail so that we can feel Francie’s pain and embarrassment over going to school reeking of kerosene which her mother put on her scalp to make sure she didn’t catch lice from other children.  We can appreciate the tight bond of Francie’s mother and aunts as they fight to keep their families afloat amidst hardship, infant mortality, and imperfect husbands they can’t help but love.  We see the joy Johnny brings to the household even while experiencing the pain wrought by his unchecked addiction.  We can be impressed at Francie’s ability to overcome her mother’s obvious favoritism toward Francie’s little brother, Neeley, with the gradually dawning realization that the favoritism is purposefully engendering a spirit of tenacity and independence in Francie which is what she needs for survival and success.  Katie desires a better life for her children and knows Neeley will require educational doors to be opened for him, and understands that Francie will fight and persevere to kick down those doors on her own.

Francie eventually takes responsibility to provide for her family and to persevere in obtaining the education which is her deepest desire.  She becomes a woman in deed long before her body and emotions catch up to adulthood.

The gentle rhythms of the book lead us onward through Francie’s coming-of-age, causing us to grieve with her, root for her, and applaud her resilience.  This book is not a sentimental look back at “simpler days of yore.”  It is an acknowledgement and celebration of how difficult and deadly the “good old days” really were.  In A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, we find that Francie is the tree– the kind of tree that keeps sprouting back no matter how many times it is cut back or deprived.  I highly recommend reading this book as a coming-of-age book, as a story about the triumph of the human spirit, as an in-depth historical picture of early 20th century American life, and especially because it will draw you into the Nolan family to see their love, grief, tenacity, and sacrifice without any syrupy glossing over of hard realities.  Yet, all the gritty realness is not ugly or painful to read.  Betty Smith was a great story-teller indeed.

This quote occurs in the beginning of the book as Francie is being introduced to the reader.

The one tree in Francie’s yard was neither a pine nor a hemlock.  It had pointed leaves which grew along green switches which radiated from the bough and made a tree which looked like a lot of opened green umbrellas.  Some people called it the Tree of Heaven.  No matter where its seed fell, it made a tree which stuggled to reach the sky.  It grew in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps and it was the only tree that grew out of cement.  It grew lushly, but only in the tenement districts.