With their institutionalized mother lost in a fog of visions and voices, Chloe and Shana find themselves living with a frayed, alcoholic father and a silent four-year-old who finds comfort in spoonfuls of sugar. Through alternating chapters related in soulful voices, readers hear from both sisters and experience two very different responses to familial disintegration. Chloe works to create normalcy, mothering her adopted brother Micah and clinging to fond memories: her mother’s paintings, laughter and elaborate, oceanic fairy tales. She spends hours staring at jars of sea-glass, remembering her family’s good times. Shana hides behind goth costumes and white makeup, sneaking out nightly to disconnect from the home she hates. Teens will relate both to Chloe’s desire to ameliorate and to Shana’s icy urge to distance herself from pain. When Social Services threatens to take Micah away and their father’s neglected funeral business falters, their fragmented reality becomes impossible to ignore. Co-authors Barkley and Hepler offer a seamless, striking story that subtly depicts the girls’ incremental growth and the healing they find in new friendships. (Fiction. 12 & up)
