PHOTO
Wiley Cash
Doubleday
A cast of people related through blood, interest, intrigue; all are here.
The Quillby girls, Easter and Ruby, find themselves in a foster home after their mother overdoses. Their father has disappeared and signed a paper that says he has no right to be in their lives. They are assigned a child advocate who is so far out of the local police force as to be a pariah.
In this rich description of the workings of an underclass behaving from reflex and cunning and those who are upper class behaving not so differently but with more accepted power and respect, each character has a role in the movement of the uplifting of the Quillby girls from the foster home to their grandparents in Alaska.
In between this, their time with their father enriches their lives and gives hope and promise for their future. His final parcel to them assures them that he cares and is watchful.
- Willie Campbell is a Dunedin educator.