THIS ISN’T ABOUT THE MONEY

It’s a miracle that Janey, 12, and her sister YoYo, 5, survive when the drunken woman driver hits their car in the desert and kills both of their parents. YoYo is unharmed, but Janey’s face is severely injured and will require plastic surgery when healed. The girls go to live with Grandpa and Aunt Baby in California to lives that are totally changed. As Janey worries about losing her best friends, YoYo forgetting their parents and reverting to being a baby, and Aunt Baby’s determination to sue the driver for big money, she struggles to cope with her own emotional and physical healing. She’s afraid that if she cries, that will somehow make it true that her Mom and Dad died. A trip back to Flagstaff to visit their graves unlocks Janey’s grief as her two best friends ask questions that prompt her to recall what her parents said to her in the car before the crash. A preface ends the story with a flashback to that fateful trip. Emotional and realistic, Warner’s (Sister Split, not reviewed, etc.) sensibility and voice of young teens in distress is always genuine, touching a painful subject with a compassionate hand. (Fiction. 9-12)