Skip to main content

Hope in the Holler


Hope in the Holler
By Lisa Lewis Tyre
Nancy Paulsen Books, 2018. Fiction, 214 p.

It had always just been Wavie Conley and her mama and it worked, until her mama, Ronelda, got sick. Before Mama passed away she left Wavie with a list of instructions, including "Be brave, Wavie B.! You got as much right to a good life as anybody, so find it!" Right after the funeral Wavie is with her caseworker as a woman comes up and says " Wavie?  . . . I'm your aunt, Samantha Rose! I've come to take care of you." Wavie's mama hadn't ever mentioned a sister.

The courts approve to have Samantha Rose be Wavie's temporary guardian while they work on the paperwork to make it final. She goes back to the trailer park her mama grew up in called Conley Hollow. Although she gets to sleep in her mama's old bed, in her mama's old bedroom, living with Samantha Rose and her cousin Hoyt is terrible. It becomes clear, she is only there for the family to collect her Social Security check. No one in the house cares about her. She does meets some true friends in the neighborhood, Gilbert and Camille. Together they find clues to Waive's past and a possible solution to Wavie's current living situation.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Kareem Between

  Kareem Between By Shifa Saltagi Safadi New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2024. Fiction. 324 pages.  Kareem loves football and as he gets ready to start seventh grade he dreams of someday becoming the first Syrian American NFL player. Seventh grade is not off to a great start for Kareem, after football tryouts don't go as he had planned, his best friend moves away, and his mom returns to Syria to help bring his sick grandfather to the US for treatment. So when Austin, the quarterback and coach's son, offers to talk to his dad and get Kareem on the football team in the spring, if he will cheat and do his homework for him, Kareem agrees. Kareem really wants to fit in at school and he is desperate to find a friend, but deep down he knows that doing Austin's homework isn't the right thing to do. And to make things harder, Kareem's mom asks him to be a friend to Fadi, a Syrian Christian refugee. He knows he should stand up for Fadi and help him adjust to the new school,...

Review: Sole Survivor

  Sole Survivor  Written By Norman Ollestad and Brendan Kiely  New York: Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers, 2025. 255 pages.  This is a juvenile biography/memoire about the plane crash that Norman Ollestad survived when he was a sixth grader. The book starts off with Norman wining a skiing competition and heading home to play in a hockey game only to head onto an airplane with his dad, his dad’s girlfriend (Sandra), and the pilot so he could go and claim his trophy for the skiing competition. Only, the plane crashed and the pilot and Norman’s dad were killed. Then when Sandra falls and dies as well, Norman is left as the sole survivor from the plane crash in the San Gabriel Mountains during a snowstorm.  Fans of Hatchet or other adventure novels will love reading how Norman survived this ordeal. And they will be even more impressed with the fact that this is a true story and the person who survived and is still alive today. This book goes over all of...

Review: Fowl Play

  Fowl Play By Kristin O'Donnell Tubb New York: Katherine Tegen Books, 2024. Fiction 277 pages. Still reeling from her beloved uncle's death, Chloe Alvarez is comforted and confused when at his last will and testament reading, Uncle Will gifts her his African Grey parrot, Charlie. Charlie has a robust vocabulary and loves to make Alexa requests for her favorite songs, but when she starts saying things like, "homicide," and "cyanide," Chloe becomes convinced that Uncle Will may have met his demise by murder instead of a genetic disease, as was previously thought. Ultimately, bringing in her brother, Grammy, and Uncle Frank (and of course Charlie,) Chloe's ragtag and adoring family support her search for answers ---going on stakeouts, engaging in fast pursuits, and searching for clues. But as the suspects stack up and the mystery grows, Chole will learn that the process of death and grieving is complicated, and in the end her Uncle Will's words that, ...