FICTION

So Far Away

by Meg Mitchell Moore
Reagan Arthur: Little, Brown. May 2012. c.336p. ISBN 9780316097697. $25.99. F
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Bright 13-year-old Natalie Gallagher is struggling to survive. Her mother is nearly catatonic from a difficult divorce. Her mostly absent dad and his girlfriend are expecting a baby. Natalie's former best friend has joined forces with a sociopathic Popular Girl whose cyberbullying of Natalie escalates at frightening speed. To escape, Natalie heads to the Massachusetts Archives with an old diary she found in her attic, hoping for help in deciphering the tragic tale of Bridget, a beleaguered Boston maid. Widowed archivist Kathleen Lynch sees in Natalie an opportunity to save another "girl in trouble," having lost her own daughter years earlier to drugs and bad friends and the streets. Natalie and Kathleen form a fragile bond that very well may be salvation for both of them—or their undoing.
VERDICT Moore's second novel (after The Arrivals) takes readers on a stomach-clenching journey with two good people in terrible pain. She underlies her fresh, gripping look at a long-standing social problem with a backstory that will take less observant readers by surprise. [See Prepub Alert, 11/7/11.]
Reviewed by Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI , May 15, 2012
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