FLYING LESSONS

Although all the evidence points to a plane crash when her dancer mother fails to return from a flight with her stunt-pilot boyfriend, LaMarr refuses to believe she’s dead, insisting that she has gone to Hollywood and will soon be seen in a movie musical. But she’s sent to live with heretofore-unknown relatives in the South. On the long bus ride, she has her first encounter with the sad and mysterious Truly. Her uncle Vital accepts her lovingly, remorseful over his treatment of his sister; her aunt Millie accepts her with trepidation and doubt. Truly appears intermittently and disturbingly at key times and places during her initiation into this new life. Is he her guardian angel or is she his? But it is her relationship with a crusty, wheelchair-bound writer of dime-novel Westerns, as they follow Amelia Earhart’s doomed flight, which leads to the painful acceptance that her mother, like Amelia, is gone forever. The plot encompasses a myriad of problems and events that push the “suspense of disbelief” to its outer limits. LaMarr must face so many issues that it a wonder that she can cope at all. She is dealing with her mother’s death, an entirely new family and way of life, the mystery of Truly’s existence or nonexistence, and on top of that, the identity of her father and the question of whether they can possibly acknowledge each other. In spite of the convoluted plot, Matthews (Scorpio’s Child, 2001, etc.) has created a cast of characters of depth and mystery. Although LaMarr barely scratches the surface in her understanding of the people around her, she realizes that there is more to them and their relationships than she can fathom. Readers will concur. (Fiction. 10-14)