Finding Day's Bottom

After her father dies, eleven-year-old Jane-Ery slowly finds healing through her relationship with her grandfather and their rural Virginia home.

Grade 4-6–After the death of her father in a sawmill accident, Jane-Ery, 11, passes through levels of grief so poignantly revealed that her voice sets a ragged emotional tone throughout. This tension, paired with a languorous pace, deepens the value of an authentically drawn backdrop that embodies stillness and reflection. The Virginia mountains are home and push Jane-Ery into a personal space where her memories prick her heart. They pour over her and then fade away, leaving an ache that she cannot escape. Her pain is balanced by her mothers contained grief and Grandpaps wisdom, kindness, and humor, characteristics reminiscent of her dad. Though her grandfathers folksy speech evokes her father, it both uplifts and uncovers the familys raw and slowly healing spirits. A novel full of insight and truth.–Nancy Call, Santa Cruz Public Libraries, Aptos, CA
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After Jane-Ery's father dies in a sawmill accident, her grandfather comes down from his mountain home to live with his daughter and granddaughter. Missing her daddy's songs, pet names, and just his presence in her life, Jane-Ery finds herself looking for him in the shadows of the woods around her home. Grandpap takes her to pick blackberries, explains why he talks to his bees, regales her with traditional stories, teaches her to weave baskets from pine needles, and tells her of a mysterious place called Day's Bottom. Jane-Ery says from the beginning, "He'd better not even try" to take her daddy's place, but Grandpap slowly makes his own place in the family and in her heart. Set in the mountains of Virginia in the 1950s, this affecting first-person novel is an involving story of loss, pain, healing, and family love. Told in Jane-Ery's quiet voice and sometimes-colorful local vocabulary, the narrative is inseparable from its well-realized setting, but the characters and emotions are universal. Carolyn Phelan
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