Sister ¦ Her Own Song

Ellen Howard writes about 'issues' with great skill and insight (as she showed in her earlier novel. Gillyflower). Sisters taskes place on a prairie farm, about 100 years ago (actually filling out the spare details of facts from the author's own family). Alena, the eldest of four, has to act as midwife, when the fifth is born prematurely, and then as substitute mother when the baby dies and the mother is lift weak and, ill. Her Own Song also uses the past, the early part of this century, to follow Mellie's intense few days of discovery. She finds her origins in a tangled web, the includes her natural mother selling her to Chinese parents, from which she's forcibly taken by government officials. Having lost her adopted mother, Mellie (Mei-Li) discovers a rich source of family and a new sense of her identity.

The skill of these books is to tell their stories well and reach into dark and difficult areas. Readers can come to understand about these through book which are simply too good to put down.