VELVET

A teen discovers her mother’s old diary in this debut YA novel.

Now that she’s almost 16, Velvet Underwood is old enough to ask her mother for the truth about her father. He left them both when Velvet was just 6 months old. “My mama has a past, one she’s proud of (so she says), and in Sack City everyone knows everyone’s business (so she also says),” narrates Velvet. “And maybe she’s right, because it’s no secret Mama was involved with Diamond Jim, my daddy.” Velvet knows little about Diamond Jim other than that he was handsome, good at bowling, and drove a Cadillac. (Her mother is happy to tell Velvet that she was named for the material of the car’s back seat, on which she was conceived.) She also knows her mother, the wine-slugging Lynette, is much whispered about around Sack City, a straight-laced town where people “act like Jesus is the mayor.” Then one night, Velvet finds Lynette’s diary and can’t help herself from taking a look inside, figuring—correctly—it might contain a few more facts about the mysterious Diamond Jim. It does, but they are not at all the tidbits that Velvet was hoping to discover. For one thing, she learns that there was a baby conceived in the back of Diamond Jim’s Cadillac early in her parents’ courtship—but it wasn’t Velvet. The miscarriage is just one of a number of very adult facts that color the image Velvet has long held in her mind about her parents, and the revelations arrive just as she’s beginning to take her own first steps into romance. Velvet decides she needs to meet Diamond Jim and maybe convince him to come back to Lynette. But will Velvet’s meddling in Lynette’s private life help provide her with a better sense of her origins or simply confuse things even further?

Strommen’s prose, as narrated by Velvet, is buoyant and earnest, as here when her first date asks if it’s OK to kiss her: “Bobby Johnson is going to kiss me. Oh Lord Jesus, he’s going to kiss me! I want to ask Mercy what she thinks, but I can’t. I have to act fast. I decide it has to happen sometime—most girls my age have already had their first kiss.” The novel is set in the South some indeterminate number of decades in the past, and the whole book is infused with a heavy dose of nostalgia. The tone may prove a bit treacly for some, but beneath it, the characters, particularly Lynette and her own mother, Ditty, brim with pathos. Sack City manages to come off as cruel and homey at the same time, and Velvet’s circle—which includes her best friend, Mercy, and eventually Bobby—provides a safe place from which she can consider the struggles of the previous generations. It’s a sentimental tale for sure, but one that many readers will enjoy quite a bit.

A sincere, endearing coming-of-age tale about a daughter and her single mom.