Little Audrey Book

“What else would you wish for?” Daddy says. “If you could have anything in the world, what would you wish for?”

I shrug. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe . . .”

“Maybe what?”

“For us to live better than we do.”

He does not say anything.

In 1948, award-winning author Ruth White lived in Jewell Valley, a coal camp nestled between the hills of southwestern Virginia, with her mother, still mourning for a baby who died four years earlier; her father, who spent the weekends and most of his pay out drinking; and her three older sisters, Audrey, Yvonne, and Eleanor. Told in Audrey’s voice, this is how the author imagines Audrey’s experiences during a time of great trauma for the White family – and what happened before they were able to live a better life.

This snapshot of life in a coal camp, complete with everyday heartaches and joys – as well as stories, songs, and jokes – is Ruth White’s most personal work to date.

Publishers Weekly

White recrosses autobiographical territory first covered in Sweet Creek Holler, this time through the perspective of her oldest sister, sixth-grade Audrey, who narrates. The family is eking out a hand-to-mouth existence in a coal mining camp; Daddy spends his meager pay on liquor instead of food; Mommy is stoic but often emotionally absent, mourning the death in infancy, four years earlier, of the family's fifth daughter. Longing for a better life, Audrey has recently overcome scarlet fever, which has left her painfully thin and vulnerable to taunts. She has honest disdain for her bothersome sisters-the three little pigs, she calls them-and total admiration for her teacher. Gritty details and hill-country vernacular skillfully evoke a sad, hardscrabble life. The story is stronger in delineating character and setting than it is in narrative development, and its most lasting appeal may lie in the insights it provides into White's other books. Ages 10-up. (Sept.)

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