By Sue Corbett, People Magazine, July 4, 2011
Fifteen-year-old Alice is at odds with her mother, annoyed by her whip-smart sister and close to her father, Matt, who plants a garden with her each spring. Then Matt’s Army Reserve unit is activated for duty in Iraq. Bereft, Alice wears an unwashed shirt of her dad’s for weeks, trying to keep his memory close. Though the specter of sorrow that falls over the story from the beginning never recedes, the prominent emotion is love. Every child should have a father she adores this much; readers may feel inadequate to Matt, who promises to come home but, just in case, leaves Alice a cache of letters with labels like “the moment you realize you want this boy to kiss you” and “the moment you realize you’re more like your mother than you want to be.” Harrington’s first novel makes a powerful statement against the war without pointing fingers. There are thousands of American kids like Alice, facing down their teen years with a parent gone to war. Her story is harrowing and heartbreaking, but it reads like truth.
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