The New York Review of Books (2022-01-13)

30 The New York Review

Florence Nightingale that Raymie has

lost under the bed of a nursing home

patient. They can’t reclaim their miss-

ing parents, but their shared pursuit of

these substitute objects bonds the girls

into a new kind of family.

This alternative family begins to

form at the baton-twirling class. When

Raymie hears Louisiana apologizing to

her absent cat—“Archie, I’m sorry! I’m

sorry I betrayed you!”—she quietly re-

peats the apology to herself: “‘I’m sorry,’

Raymie whispered. ‘I betrayed you.’ For

some reason, the words seemed worth

repeating.” Raymie collects phrases like

these, often shuffling their elements as

though they are parts of a rebus. Within

her experience of abandonment, she has

an unusually strong version of a power

specific to childhood: that of making

something valuable out of not much at

all. For a moment, Louisiana’s repur-

posed words help Raymie imagine how

her father could have left, and what he

might have said in a good-bye.

Raymie has an elderly neighbor, Mrs.

Borkowski, who sometimes sits in a

lawn chair in the middle of the street.

Raymie’s mother says that Mrs. Bor-

kowski is “crazy as a loon,” but Raymie

likes her company. She brings the Little

Miss Central Florida Tire application

over to Mrs. Borkowski for help filling it

out, at which point the old lady launches

into what sounds like an old wives’ tale.

Once, she saw a giant seabird snatch a

baby from a mother’s arms:

“But the mother got the baby back,

right?”

“From a gigantic seabird?

Never,” said Mrs. Borkowski.

“Those gigantic seabirds, they

keep what they take. Also, they

steal buttons. And hairpins.”

This story could easily be dismissed as

a fiction, or even a delusion. But Ray-

mie listens carefully and accepts the

wisdom in it. It offers her a slantwise

consolation: a family member is stolen,

rather than having left. It also offers a

slantwise truth: the separation is final.

And it gives her the consolation of story-

telling itself, a bright whistling she and

her friends will use repeatedly against

whatever is out there in the dark.

One of Raymie’s strongest memories

of her father is an ambivalent one: it in-

volves a story about a girl named Clara

Wingtip who drowned in the town’s

lake long ago. An aerial photograph of

the lake hangs above her father’s desk

at the insurance company, where she

saw it for the first time at the age of six:

He had put her on his shoulders

so that she was close to the photo-

graph, and Raymie had traced the

shadow of Clara with her fingertip.

For a long time after that, she had

been afraid to go into his office,

afraid that Clara was waiting for her

and that her ghost would pull Ray-

mie into the lake, pull her under the

water and drown her somehow.

Raymie is still haunted by her father’s

tale. In his absence she thinks of the

practical lessons she learned from her

old lifesaving coach, Mr. Staphopou-

los—who, unlike her father, said good-

bye when he moved away from Lister:

Every day in Lifesaving 101, Mr.

Staphopoulos had all the students

stand on the dock and flex their

toes and isolate their objectives.

Mr. Staphopoulos believed that

flexing your toes cleared your

mind and that once your mind was

clear, it was easy to isolate your ob -

jectives and figure out what to do

next. For instance: save whoever

was drowning.

These ideas—about flexing her toes

and isolating her objectives—become

phrases that Raymie repeats to herself

throughout the book. They guide her and

buy her the time she needs to allow other

actions to become imaginable, then

possible. And so when Louisiana nearly

drowns in the lake after the girls rescue

a one-eyed dog named Buddy from the

pound during their hunt for Archie, Ray-

mie tacitly rewrites the ghost story her

father told her: she saves the life of her

friend, and she herself doesn’t drown.

DiCamillo has said that after com-

pleting Raymie Nightingale she kept

hearing the voice of Louisiana Elefante

and “was really surprised by how much

Louisiana wanted to tell her story.” The

first and third books of the trilogy are

narrated in close third person, but in

Louisiana’s Way Home, the title char-

acter, now twelve years old, directly ad-

dresses the page. “In some ways, this is

a story of woe and confusion,” she says,

“but it is also a story of joy and kind-

ness and free peanuts.”

Louisiana has been raised in precari-

ous circumstances by her grandmother,

a crafty old woman in bunny barrettes

whose practical advice is to steal cans

of tuna fish for their high protein con-

tent. Granny has always said that Lou-

isiana’s parents were “famous trapeze

artists known as the Flying Elefantes,”

who drowned in a shipwreck. She has

also impressed upon Louisiana the ne-

cessity of outwitting an unseen figure

named Marsha Jean.

In Raymie Nightingale Louisiana

tells her friends that Marsha Jean

“wants to capture me and put me in

the county home, where they only

ever serve you bologna to eat.” For the

reader, Marsha Jean appears to repre-

sent the risk of Louisiana being taken

from Granny by child welfare services,

or of Granny being put into a mental

institution. She also reads as a stand-in

for the more workaday menaces that

pursue them: electric companies want-

ing their bills paid, law enforcement

objecting to Granny’s and Louisiana’s

petty thefts from convenience stores.

Beverly is sure that Marsha Jean

doesn’t exist, and she is baffled that

Louisiana seems to swallow Granny’s

stories hook, line, and sinker. Raymie is

less certain. When they visit Louisiana

and Granny at the empty house where

they appear to be squatting, Raymie

asks Granny if Marsha Jean is real.

Out of Louisiana’s earshot, Granny re-

sponds that she is “the ghost of what’s

to come”: “It’s good to be on the lookout

for those who might do you harm. I need

Louisiana to be cautious. And wily. I

won’t always be here to protect her.”

For all her slyness, Granny is essen-

tially sympathetic in Raymie Nightin-

gale—a pragmatic eccentric and kindly

deceiver. This is complicated in Lou-

isiana’s Way Home when she wakes

Louisiana at 3 AM and says, “The day

of reckoning has arrived. The hour is

close at hand. We must leave immedi-

ately.” This time they are fleeing not

from Marsha Jean but from a “curse of

sundering”—the result of Louisiana’s

GOODS & EFFECTS

Hannah, a Mennonite widow,

creates a store in a van and

becomes the heart of a

network of lives that span

many years. Her tender lies,

clever schemes, and good-

heartedness fuel the dreams

of beguiling characters.

Golden Antelope Press

BookViral Millennium Finalist

“A timeless story beautifully

written...wholly endearing

characters that exude strength of

personality and purpose...nothing

short of superb.”—BookViral

“Stunning writing and language used

throughout.”—Literary Titan

“Eloquent, erudite and deftly penned.”—Midwest Book Review

“Engaging tale about a spirited woman’s compelling journey.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Hannah leaps off the page...a strong, powerful, and self-directed woman...a

remarkable person not easily forgotten.”—The US Review of Books

“Great cast of complex characters.”—Dick Leonardo, Book Room Reviews

“Its quirky characters radiate kindness and humor.”—Catherine Beeman, Reedsy

Discovery

“The descriptions of the scenery and events are so vivid that I felt I was watching

a television series.”—Rosemary Wright, Online Book Club

“The characters are eclectic and wonderfully relatable.”—Lit Amri, Readers’

Favorite

“What a wonderful movie it could be!...brilliant.”—Soumya Sreehair, Readers’

Favorite

“A work of sheer beauty and ingenuity.”—The Book Commentary

ZERO

An egotistical buffoon with

no talent becomes the

darling political celebrity

of his country. A bawdy

satire of tabloid politics set

in a fictitious land overrun

by Zealots, Hysterics and

Fanatics.

Cabal Books.

“Uproarious and terrifying in how closely

its madness parallels reality.”—Midwest

Book Review

“Political satire delivered with sensational

results...wholly sublime.”—BookViral

“The characters are ludicrously colorful

with sort of a Dr. Seuss meets Monty

Python vibe.”—Elaine Pascale, Hellnotes Review

“Inventive and unique novel filled with laugh-out-loud comedic moments...fast-paced,

sharp and witty.”—Lesley Jones, Readers’ Favorite

“Brilliant political farce...mind-boggling comedic use of language.”—Jon Michael Miller,

Readers’ Favorite

“Combines playfulness and preposterousness...had me gasping with shock, laughing

hysterically...brilliant.”—Foluso Falaye, Readers’ Favorite

“A stand out...one of the funnest [sic] books I’ve read this year.”—Literary Titan

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