Florrie’s 16th birthday wish is for a boycott of chain stores. She loves things that are fading and disappearing and collects old postcards, “ . . . fingering them as if they could carry her into their lost, hand-tinted worlds.” In her hometown San Antonio, this charismatic organizer rallies her friends in support of independent businesses. Over Wal-Mart’s “We Sell for Less” sign, they drape a sheet reading “Less Imagination, Less Independence, Less Creativity.” The boycotters land on the front page. What is unique about this story is how refreshingly genuine it is. In the end, her boycott fizzling, Florrie worries that her friends (longing to return to Old Navy and the Pancake House) are getting sick of her, and her too-good-to-be-true boyfriend turns out to be just that. However, her mother, who owns a small family restaurant, is facing Taco Bell as a competitor and happily agrees to an event celebrating authentic San Antonio cooking. Infused with Florrie’s yearning and written with Nye’s customary gentle attentiveness to language, theme and character, this will raise the question: “Did you ever love any place that went away?” (Fiction. 12-16)
