#14 Another Part of the House by Winston Estes ***

Another Part of the House was given to me back when I was participating in bookcrossing.com meet ups. Been on my shelf for quite awhile and I look forward to finally getting to read it.

From the back of the book: The dustbowl years were hard in Texas, but for a boy growing up, family love tinged them with magic. For young Larry Morrison these were times of untarnished happiness: cliff-hanging serials at the movies, stickers caught in the feet, swimming down at the pond. But there's pain and loneliness in growing up, too, made bearable only by togetherness. Larry's family is poor, like everyone else in Wordsworth. Then suddenly, death strikes the most loved member of the family and out of his pain and sadness Larry takes the first step toward manhood, as the people and adventures he has known reveal to him the treasure of the vanished innocence of boyhood.

04/27/06 Enjoyed this very much. Sweet and nostalgic. Estes did a brilliant job of depicting depression era Texas.

Loved this quote from the book: "Both of those terrible things had happened in our own family right under my very nose, and here I was still living, eating, sleeping, playing, breathing, and walking around on two legs. Maybe I had been dealing with them all along, as Papa said, and didn't know it. Maybe the dealing with them is what makes the jagged edges smooth and the sharp points dull." The "things" referred to are death and betrayal.