THE TRUTH ABOUT SPARROWS

“These are hard times, Babygirl,” Daddy says and, sure enough, 1933 is a rough year for Sadie Wynn. Her family has lost their house in drought-plagued Missouri, and Sadie’s best friend in the world has moved to California. The Wynns move to Texas, near the Aransas Pass Seawall. It’s a coming-down in the world, but survival is at stake. They make a home of a tar-paper shack, Daddy fishes, and Sadie goes off to clean shrimp at the cannery. It’s a hard life, but Sadie is up to the challenge. She works hard, helps deliver a baby, finds a new friend, and shows empathy for a man she calls Mr. Sparrow, who lives in a cardboard box near the seawall. What could have been just another surviving-the-Depression story is, instead, a beautifully realized work, memorable for its Gulf Coast setting and the luminous voice of Sadie Wynn. An important addition to the genre from a new voice. (Fiction. 10+)