PINE ISLAND HOME

Four orphaned girls try to figure out how to get along on their own.

When a relative is found to take them in after their missionary parents’ sudden deaths by tsunami, the McCready sisters move from Borneo to British Columbia only to discover that Great-Aunt Martha has died unexpectedly. However, Martha has left her paperwork in good order, registered the children at the local schools, and stocked her house with food and beds. Fourteen-year-old Fiona must keep everyone together and avoid alerting social services. The school principal is sympathetic and supportive. The cranky neighbor, Al, a drinker who lets fly the occasional oath and whose trailer home is in disarray, reluctantly agrees to pretend to be the girls’ guardian. They think of him as the Waste Troll, based on a disparaging comment by the McCreadys’ garden-gnome–look-alike lawyer. While Marlin, 12, discovers her affinity and talent for cooking and baking, Natasha, 10, becomes a bird-watcher, and Charlie, 8 and a worrier, befriends Al before any of the others. The default white is assumed. Horvath, ever respectful of the inner lives of children, has a way of incorporating moments of sweet hilarity into an account that makes the girls’ situation seem plausible. She doesn’t stint on vocabulary or on sophisticated observations, yet her narrative arc is direct and extraordinarily satisfying, with its emphasis on competence and survival of the domestic, familial, and emotional sort.

Delightful.