GROUNDED

In 12-year-old Daralynn’s world of ’60s TV dinners and Perry Mason, “B.C.” marks the time before the small-plane crash that killed her father, brother and sister, and “A.D.” is “After the Deaths.” Daralynn’s mother hardens her heart after the tragedy, and her pragmatic daughter does her darndest to follow suit. The small-town–Missouri story—despite all the corpses, funerals and cremations—is not so much about death as about coping with grief. Lively, comical details, described in Daralynn’s matter-of-fact first-person voice, keep the story buoyant, such as when Daralynn mistakes a girl for a boy at her mother’s hair salon and gives her a Marlon Brando–inspired haircut she hastily dubs “Le Frenchie,” and when she infers the town’s new crematorium will be an ice-cream parlor. In the sentimental end, this salty-sweet, nut-sprinkled novel underscores the “grounding” that comes with caring for people, whether it’s flashy-trashy Aunt Josie and her boardinghouse gentlemen, senile Mamaw poignantly nurturing her dolls or, most powerfully of all, Daralynn and her mother finding their way back to each other. (Historical fiction. 10-14)