ALWAYS, YOUR SISTER

Amelia Walker, newly turned 11, begins a series of letters to the baby brother who was stillborn at 28 weeks four years before.

Millie narrates this account over the course of several months when her mother is pregnant again and the family waits in anticipation. She’s anxious about both her mother and this new sibling, whom she thinks of as their “rainbow baby,” following Noah, their “angel baby.” Glimpses of life on their Queensland, Australia, farm, where Millie’s dad raises sheep, are interspersed with accounts of school, friends, summer holidays camping out on the lawn, making a tire swing, and meeting the new baby born to a friend’s teenage brother and his girlfriend. A persistent drought accompanies the family’s anxieties about the pregnancy, and a lamb born late in the year dies from the heat. References to God, church, and saying grace are quiet indicators of the importance of faith to the Walker family. They rely on each other for help and advice, and Millie has also learned to visit the school chaplain for counseling when her worries become too intense. Prentice deftly conveys Millie’s coming to terms with grief along with a reassuring sense of the many resources, especially her family members, who support her. Millie is a temperate, likable narrator. Characters read white.

Warmhearted and optimistic.