But Austin calls the strange woman "Mama," and things go from bad to worse when Dess meets Hope, the Carters' teenage daughter. Her half-brother Austin has been their foster child since he was a baby, and Dess remembers him as the one bit of joy she had in an abusive home. While this transition from name-calling enemies to sisterly bond feels quick given the time line of the novel, the overall theme remains strong: family are the people you can trust to care for you, regardless of how you come together.įifteen-year-old Dess isn't excited about living with the Carters after her mother is arrested, but there is a bright spot.
Yet the two begin to stand up for and help each other-resentfully at first, but with genuine appreciation by the end. On Hope's side, isolation and frustration are the major motivators, as Hope struggles to adjust at school after her best friend moves overseas.
This experience also makes Dess, who is white, particularly sensitive to being mistaken as racist by Hope and her family, who are black. Dess is cynical about whether a family can be as loving as Hope's seems her own grandmother refused to care for her and her brother upon their mother's incarceration, in part, Dess believes, because her brother is biracial. Resentment and distrust immediately flare on both sides, but Davis avoids the trappings of an issue novel about foster care by giving her characters deep nuance and complexity-enhanced by the girls' narrating alternating chapters. Gr 8 Up-Dess and Hope are both 15, and their lives have intersected: Dess has moved from a group home to a foster placement, and Hope is her new foster sister.
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