Gardenias
by Faith Sullivan
Published by Milkweed Press
Click on book
cover to order
at Amazon.com
Reviewed by Kathy Perschmann, Carver (MN) Librarian
The long-awaited sequel to Cape Ann has finally arrived.
Lark Erhardt, her mother Arlene, and Aunt Betty arrive in San Diego in 1942, breaking away from their Depression-era lives in Harvester, Minnesota with abusive, gambling Willie Erhardt.
Aunt Betty is still suffering from the death of her baby and the abandonment of her husband, Stanley.
Arlene holds the family together, finding housing in a wartime project and a job as a secretary at Consolidated Aircraft. Betty finds work as a clerk in a big department store.
Lark must cope with a gang of violent and ruthlessly vicious boys who threaten her. She deals with it by mostly staying at home, writing and hiding.
Lark finds a magical painting of a cabin in the woods, and imagines it is in Minnesota and that she is living there. She starts fourth grade and is terribly alone, only her writing to hold on to. She misses Minnesota, but not her father. They attempt to make a home, planting a gardenia bush and some daisies that Lark carefully waters every day.
Betty and Arlene befriend lonely sailors, giving them home-cooked meals on the weekend. Shirley, another misfit girl, finds food, praise, and a safe haven with Lark's family from her own very dysfunctional family life. Shirley is prickly and even sometimes nasty to Lark. Almost a second child in the family, Shirley takes piano lessons from Aunt Betty, and the family helps clothe her and finance her further musical education. For Shirley, music is an escape--just as Lark's writing is a refuge.
Upheavals come in many forms: Willie comes to California to demand their return; Uncle Stanley shows up, telling them he has enlisted. Neighbors in the project become dear friends, as Lark learns their stories and tells them hers. Finally several events shatter all their lives, and change them forever.
Armchair Interviews says: Sullivan is a wonderful and evocative storyteller, making the 1940s and wartime San Diego, the labor movement, the death of Roosevelt, and social upheaval of women in the workforce, the music and the fear, all come alive.