A LONG TIME AGO TODAY
by Sally Warner
An angry Dilly Howell, 12, blames her mother for dying six years ago and resents the control her mother still maintains over her and her father’s lives. Because Mummie would have wanted it, Dilly and her father continue their annual summer vacation from their home in Pasadena to the Dillon estate in the Adirondacks. When Dilly discovers that her mother wrote a letter to her just before dying, she fears that it will only contain more demands. Her curiosity wins out, however, and her search for the letter yields other letters from her mother’s past that reveal an eerie similarity between her mother’s friendship and her own with an Adirondack neighbor. These letters, including that from her mother, force Dilly to confront her anger and ultimately empower her to make her own life decisions. Warner writes a poignant story of friendship and mother-daughter love that will not leave a dry eye among its intended readers. (Fiction. 10-13)