Mary McGarry Morris is particularly good at portraying the many
small humiliations that add up to rage in the heart of a poor
child. In her new novel, THE LOST MOTHER, Thomas and his plucky
little sister, Margaret, struggle to cope with their mother's
abandonment. Meanwhile, the Great Depression is dragging on and the
Talcotts' father, already devastated by his wife's departure, gets
more and more desperate.

Henry Talcott is a butcher in rural Vermont. He travels from farm
to farm slaughtering animals as needed. Unfortunately, in hard
times, these animals are not replaced and he quickly runs out of
ways to support his children. His neighbors and his vanished wife's
family step in to help, but they are all disastrous choices in
their own ways.

The children learn brutal lessons about trust and fairness, and as
their sense of peril increases, they become determined to find
their beloved mother. When they do so and realize that the
difficult economic times are not the only reason for their mother's
departure, they lapse into real crisis. It is no wonder that Thomas
can no longer control his temper whereas Margaret's eagerness to
please develops into a cynical survival skill. The lowest point for
the children would seem to be their stay in the orphanage, but they
really hit rock bottom when they learn who committed them and
why.

Ms. Morris's characters are heartbreaking in their casual cruelty
and the children are especially well-depicted, neither oversweet in
their pathos nor unbelievably wise beyond their years. It's
impossible to read of their tribulations and not want to reach into
the pages and help them. The adults have a broad range of faults
and foibles: they are cheats and alcoholics, hypocrites and users,
blind, mean, powerless, and self-deluded, sharing only their
unreliability. None of these traits is as unpardonable as Henry's
crimes of being poor and unable to hide how hard he is struggling.
The two faces of small-town life are well-represented, and readers
from this milieu may wince to see them portrayed so
accurately.

Character-driven stories of such excellence are all too rare. The
characters of THE LOST MOTHER will stay in readers' minds for a
long time.