Truly Plaice's whole identity is summed up in just two words
uttered by Miss Sparrow, the teacher in her one-room schoolhouse on
Truly's first day of school. "You're a little giant!"
Truly has known she's different her entire life --- she couldn't be
less like her beautiful, dainty older sister, Serena Jane. Having
broken all predictions about her birth weight, outgrown her baby
clothes shortly after birth and outweighed her older sister, Truly
couldn't help but be aware of her physical differences. But to have
her life reduced to a freak show only reinforces Truly's
alternating feelings of displacement and self-loathing.

Truly's gigantic size sticks out, not only in comparison with
Serena Jane's loveliness, but because Aberdeen, their town in
upstate New York, is so small and isolated. It’s shrinking
rapidly (that is, except for Truly, who just keeps growing), and
any hint of difference is ridiculed or rejected. Truly does find
comfort and friendship --- in the form of small, brilliant Marcus
and mute Amelia --- but she also encounters prejudice, cowardice
and outright cruelty.

As Truly grows up and her family's fortunes change for the
worse, her story becomes inextricably wound up with that of the
town's doctor (and Serena Jane's husband), Robert Morgan. Dr.
Morgan (or Bob Bob, as he's known as a boy) is the latest in a long
line of Morgan physicians, traveling all the way back to the Civil
War, when an army deserter met Aberdeen's town witch, Tabitha
Dyerson, a woman whose legacy includes a riotously embroidered
quilt and, some say, a mysterious "shadow book" that holds the
secrets of healing --- and other secrets as well. When Truly
stumbles across Tabitha's secrets, the helpless woman trapped in a
too-huge body finally discovers a new kind of power that has
nothing to do with physical size or strength.

THE LITTLE GIANT OF ABERDEEN COUNTY is a difficult book to
categorize --- some might even call it a true original. With its
one-room schoolhouse, provincial politics and herb lore, it
sometimes feels old-fashioned, like it could have been set in the
19th century instead of in the 1960s and 1970s. But with its sly
humor, social commentary and elegant mixing of genres, Tiffany
Baker's debut is definitely set in the modern literary world.

Like John Irving's works, Baker's novel could be called
something like "New England grotesque." Her focus on Truly's
physical oddities, however, is not meant merely to shock or
titillate; instead, the book is just as focused on the small
beauties that are able to flourish even in the stifling, conformist
environment of Aberdeen County: "Everything in the world has its
two faces, however. Weeds sometimes blossom into artful flowers.
Beauty walks hand in hand with ugliness, sickness with health, and
life tiptoes around in the horned shadow of death. The trick is to
recognize which is which and to recognize what you're dealing with
at the time."

Far from being absurd, THE LITTLE GIANT OF ABERDEEN COUNTY finds
loveliness and meaning in the most unusual guises --- and it marks
the advent of a unique new talent.