I adored this book about a little girl's determination to have as normal as life as she could (whatever normal means!). It is always interesting to me how much she, and children like her, love and adore their parents, and yet when the going gets tough for the parents they dump their kids, in this instance in an orphanage. I can hardly believe adults are this cruel, but some of them are. I realize the conditions of the Depression were terrible, but I have also read about many, many families who stayed together and somehow made do. Not here. (Read: Little Heathens by Mildren Armstrong Kalish.)
Patty, soon to become Donna, is resilient and hopeful and sad and ambitious all at once. She is a survivor. She apparently harbors no hostility about any members of her birth family or her adoptive family. Indeed, noting the glaring differences in her adoptive family, she is so kind to them, both while they were living and now that they are gone. I loved reading about her and especially about her love story, which has endured for many years. I believe her husband and the love they have shared since their teen years had a huge part in helping this brave girl learn how to live and to love and therefore become an interesting, sweet, kind, and relatively content woman.
