Me & Emma
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
In many ways, Carrie Parker is like any other eight–year–old. She plays make–believe, 'hates' school, dreams of faraway places and things. But even her naively hopeful mind can't shut out the terrible realities of her home life or help her protect her younger sister.
As the big sister, Carrie is determined to do anything to keep Emma safe from a life of neglect and abuse at the hands of their drunken stepfather – a situation her mother can't seem to see, let alone prevent.
After the sisters plan to runaway from their impoverished home unravels, Carrie's world takes a shocking turn – with devastating results. In one shattering moment in the Parker sisters' lives, a startling act of violence ultimately reveals a truth that leaves everyone reeling.
By turns poignant, disarming and bittersweet, Me & Emma is the story of an endearingly precocious child and her determined fight to put the pieces of her fractured childhood back together.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"I got handed lemons, too, y'know but I learned how to make lemonade with them.... No one ever told me I had to add sugar but that's life for you. It ain't sweet." That's the jumbled and unforgiving logic that drives Flock's (But Inside I'm Screaming) second novel, a punishing Southern family drama that tries to achieve To Kill a Mockingbird grade poignancy by heaping tribulations on its child narrator. The novel starts off sweetly, with the smalltown antics of Carrie, a scrappy Scout-like eight-year-old who's always accompanied by her younger sister Emma. Carrie dreamily darts back and forth between her rough-and-tumble present (abusive stepfather, unloving mother) and the happy memories of her dead father, creating a bittersweet picture of her life in Toast, N.C., spiked with colorful Southern language and some feisty supporting characters. But journalist Flock soon loses control of her meandering story and this Southern slice-of-life disintegrates into narrative chaos. The action moves "slow as a crippled turtle," as Carrie's Momma would say, and down-home charm fails to camouflage the creaky, roundabout chronology. After nearly 300 pages of rambling drama, the twist at the end is revealed so haphazardly that it will probably bewilder readers more than surprise them. Sugarcoated it ain't, but instead of delivering profundity, Flock's tough love turns poor forsaken Carrie into a caricature.
