True To Form
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
An act of betrayal leaves a teenaged girl in 1961 wondering if the only person she can ever truly trust is herself in the finale of the “rich…timeless” (The New Yorker) Katie Nash series.
Thirteen-year-old Katie Nash is not looking forward to her summer. Her father has enlisted her in two difficult jobs—babysitting the rambunctious Wexler children and looking after her elderly, bedridden neighbor.
Luckily, she does have something to look forward to: a trip to her Texas hometown to visit her best friend Cherylanne. But people and places change, and Katie is devastated to realize Cherylanne is no exception.
A summer of upheaval for both a young girl and the country at large, True to Form is a relatable and evocative “journey of self-discovery and personal redemption” (The Seattle Times).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Berg is the master of the soft-focus, nonconfrontational women's novel, as evidenced in her 2000 Oprah Book Club selection, Open House. In her latest work, which again features the pubescent narrator first encountered in her debut novel, Durable Goods, she describes a summer in the life of 13-year-old Katie Nash. It is 1961, and Katie's mother has been dead for two years; Katie lives with her dour military father and peppy stepmother in Missouri. Resigned to allowing her strict dad to find her summer jobs, in her free time she gorges herself on junk food with her best friend, Cynthia, and works on her tan. Katie's first-person voice is deliberative and colloquial, and the story told is rarely eventful: the highlights come when Katie first starts working for a kind, needy elderly couple, the Randolphs, and wins a radio contest offering a free plane ticket anywhere in the world. Yet where does Katie choose to fly? Back to Fort Hood, Tex., where she last lived before her mother died and where she can revisit her former best friend, Cherylanne, who is slightly older than Katie and well versed in the ways of boys, clothes and getting married fast. The trip peters out when Katie realizes she really has nothing in common with boy-crazy Cherylanne. Meanwhile, Mr. Randolph secures a scholarship for Katie at the upscale school where he once taught, but even this boon becomes a hurdle when Katie belittles Cynthia to land in the rich girls' good graces. Berg lays nostalgia traps at every turn in her 10th feel-good novel, but her readers for the most part will be happy to fall into them. 14-city author tour.
