A TINY PIECE OF BLUE

A teenage girl is abandoned by her parents in Whitney’s historical drama of struggle and redemption.

Readers meet 13-year-old Silstice “Silly” Trayson in August of 1934. She is terrified, sitting in the sheriff’s office in Calhoun County, Michigan, after being caught stealing school supplies from her former one-room schoolhouse. Silly is a shy, timid girl, the fourth of six siblings born to poverty-stricken, neglectful, and abusive parents. (The family is known in the community as the “Trashy Traysons.”) Fortunately, Silly has two advocates: Her 17-year-old sister, Alberta, makes assurances to the sheriff that Silly has never been in trouble before, brings her home, and arranges for her to join the local 4-H club, where Edna Goetz becomes her mentor in the girls’ sewing and cooking division. Edna is a gentle and generous elderly lady who develops an immediate fondness for the young girl. Edna’s husband, Vernon, the crotchety, volatile 4-H county Beef Club mentor, is decidedly displeased with Edna’s attention to Silly. When Silly’s house burns to the ground, the fragile girl is left homeless. Her father runs off, never to be seen again; her mother places Silly’s twin 15-year-old sisters with their aunt and takes off with the family’s two young sons to live with her own parents. Alberta moves in with her best friend’s family. Nobody has room for Silly until Edna devises a clever and generous plan to take her in. Whitney’s novel is narrated by three alternating and distinctive voices, those of Silly, Edna, and Vernon, each defining the relationship developing among them. In equal measure, this is an affecting coming-of-age tale about Silly, who begins to find her inner strength and confidence, and the poignant story of Vernon’s gradual transformation (“He hadn’t been an easy man to live with”) after experiencing profound loss. Whitney keeps the action moving with a subplot in which Silly’s brothers become victims of an extortion and child-abduction ring operating in the town. Although the narrative borders on high melodrama, the author viscerally captures the deprivation, hunger, and despair suffered by many during the height of the Depression.

An addictive drama with moments of engaging excitement and an admirable young female hero.