The Silver Star

The Silver Star, Jeannette Walls has written a heartbreaking and redemptive novel about an intrepid girl who challenges the injustice of the adult worldâÈ'a triumph of imagination and storytelling. IT IS 1970 in a small town in California. âÈêBeanâÈë Holladay is twelve and her sister, Liz, is fifteen when their artistic mother, Charlotte, a woman who âÈêfound something wrong with every place she ever lived,âÈë takes off to find herself, leaving her girls enough money to last a month or two. When Bean returns from school one day and sees a police car outside the house, she and Liz decide to take the bus to Virginia, where their Uncle Tinsley lives in the decaying mansion thatâÈçs been in CharlotteâÈçs family for generations. An impetuous optimist, Bean soon discovers who her father was, and hears many stories about why their mother left Virginia in the first place. Because money is tight, Liz and Bean start babysitting and doing office work for Jerry Maddox, foreman of the mill in townâÈ'a big man who bullies his workers, his tenants, his children, and his wife. Bean adores her whip-smart older sisterâÈ'inventor of word games, reader of Edgar Allan Poe, nonconformist. But when school starts in the fall, itâÈçs Bean who easily adjusts and makes friends, and Liz who becomes increasingly withdrawn. And then something happens to Liz. Jeannette Walls, supremely alert to abuse of adult power, has written a deeply moving novel about triumph over adversity and about people who find a way to love each other and the world, despite its flaws and injustices.

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