Product Description

How many times can your family let you down?

All the time, if you're Cissy Funk. It's bad enough that her father left the family to find work in Denver. After all, the Depression has hit the Colorado plains hard, leaving nothing but dust and empty farms behind. What makes it all worse is that he left Cissy and her brother alone to take care of their mother, Rose. Cold and Violent, Rose seems to hate Cissy with a passion. What Cissy can't figure out is why.

In the middle of the darkest moment in her life, when Rose leaves bruises on her every day, Cissy's aunt Vera comes to town. Vera is the only bright spot on the horizon. But Vera, too, has her secrets and her troubles. Just when Cissy feels that everything is working out for her at last, her whole world falls apart again. But Cissy Funk is an amazing girl, and she'll use every remarkable ounce of will and spirit she has to make the best out of the worst situation yet.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3453537 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-01
• Released on: 2001-04-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 211 pages

From Publishers Weekly
First-time author Taylor admirably evokes the dusty, gritty aura of Depression-era Colorado, but strains with her soap opera-ish story of a dysfunctional family's struggles. The novel opens as 13-year-old Cissy hides from her abusive mother, fearing a beating for something she didn't even do. Cissy's baby sister, it eventually emerges, died in infancy, and grief has rendered their mother dangerously unstable. Cissy's father has moved away, and Cissy's older brother, Jonas, keeps vowing to leave, too. Then sophisticated, beloved Aunt Vera arrives on the scene. After Vera witnesses her sister-in-law brutally attack Cissy, she whisks Cissy off to Denver, where her father lives. But her father doesn't want her, and Vera, now penniless, is hesitant to raise a child on her own. Few of the characterizations go beyond the superficial, and when potentially shocking family secrets (about Vera's sexuality and Cissy's parentage) finally emerge, they have been so heavily foreshadowed and are so easily accepted by Cissy that they make little impact on readers. Ages 10-up.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Grade 7-9-Cissy doesn't understand why she can't do anything right. She only knows that her mother's mind has worked strangely since baby Violet's death, but wonders why she is always being punished and her older brother is not. Seeking refuge in the town movie hall when the threat of physical violence becomes too real, the 13-year-old loses herself in dreams of life the way the stars portray it. When Aunt Vera visits and sees her niece's horrible bruises, she decides that the two of them will live with her brother (Cissy's supposed father) in Denver. His blatant refusal to help is unfathomable to Cissy, and she is further devastated when Vera strangely wavers and allows her brother to return Cissy to her bleak and dangerous former life. Once again, she must battle to reestablish trust in other humans in order to survive. In the end, it is revealed that Vera had become pregnant with Cissy when she was a teenager and that her domineering brother insisted that she give the baby to him and his wife to raise. Finally, Vera stands up to him and takes Cissy away from her abusive situation to live with her and her lover, Maxine. Taylor nails small-town agrarian Dust Bowl life in the '30s. Everything from grape NEHIs to the music to the town socials complete with busybodies neatly fits. While the denouement seems rushed when compared to the richly detailed beginning, this is a minor flaw in an otherwise well-plotted novel.
Cindy Darling Codell, Clark Middle School, Winchester, KY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Gr. 6-9. The setting is the Depression, and the main character, Cissy Funk, leads a life of privation, loneliness, and horror. Cissy's little sister has died, her father has fled to Denver in search of work, her brother has run off, and her best friend has moved away. Her emotionally disturbed mother beats her at the slightest provocation. Cissy's relief finally comes with the arrival of lovely Aunt Vera from Denver. When it becomes obvious Cissy can't be left alone, Vera and Cissy escape at night and run back to Vera's Denver home. On the surface, this seems little more than just another Depression tale of hardship and child abuse. But gradually, readers come to understand that there's more here than meets the eye. Taylor gradually makes it clear that Vera left Denver to hide a secret love for her friend Maxine, as well as to rectify her relationship with her niece and Cissy's mother. With subtlety and insight, Taylor introduces readers to complexities and truths about love and family. Her ultimate conclusion: as long as you've got love, you're ahead of the game. Frances Bradburn
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

A storyline that remains captivating to the end.
Narcissus Louise Funk, better known as ?Cissy?, is a young teen scared to death of her mother. I'm not exaggerrating, she is really frightened and she has reason. Living with her brother Jonas and their mother in Depression-era Colorado, Cissy spends her days doing farm chores and attempting to please thier mother. Everything Cissy does, she does in an effort to forestall the rages that whirl around in her mother?s head, not unlike the sudden dust storms her mother is certain will come if Cissy and Jonas leave her by herself.

Cissy desperately misses her father. He left the family immediately after the burial of Violet, Cissy?s and Jonas? baby sister. Before Violet dies, or at least in Cissy's memory, her mother was warm and caring and and her father was attentive. In short, the Funks were an intact, functioning and "normal" family.

But now everything is different. Cissy?s mother idealizes her husband; she obsessively believes he will return. Jonas knows better, though he indulges his mother. He also is gentle with Cissy. But as time goes by, Frank, Cissy?s father, never does arrive. However, his sister ,Vera, does. Aunt Vera comes for a visit and begins to make a real difference in the household: Cissy now has someone she hopes will look out for her. At first, Cissy?s mother is not as violent while Vera is around. Soon that changes, and it becomes obvious that Cissy?s mother has nothing but contempt for her sister-in-law Vera.

After witnessing a particularly brutal act, Vera steals Cissy away from the house and attempts to alleviate the pain and suffering that have marred her young life up to this point. Things never go as expected and people are never quite who we think they are. This book takes many circuitous routes before we know whether there will be stability and happiness in Cissy?slife.

Taylor tackles very adult themes and presents them to the young reader with respect and sensitivity, never in any way condescending. This is no fairy tale and there are no magical, happy, improbable endings here, but rather what you might expect from real life: tough choices, hurt and disappointment and realistic characters with the strength and ability to redeem their lives, taking responsibility for themselves and for others, as well. A wonderful effort by a first-time novelist with meticulous detail of the Depression era and a storyline that remains captivating to the end.

--- Reviewed by Michelle Andrews

A great book full of many emotions!
A great book about a thirteen year old named Cissy who lives with her mother Ma and her brother Jonas in the dirty thirties. This book has lots of drama. If you can't take a sad story this is not the book for you, If you can or you like grape NEHI's you will enjoy this fast read.

An inspiring novel about a girl during the Great Depression.
Thirteen-year-old Cissy Funk longs for a better life than the one she leads, with an abusive mother in Depression-era Colorado. But most of all, she longs to be free: free of the poverty and bleakness of the Dust Bowl and free of her mother. When her Aunt Vera takes Cissy away to live with her in Denver, she believes she has found her escape, and that she will finally see her absent father again. But her father is too busy with his job for Cissy to live with him, and Aunt Vera's life seems to be made up of a tangled web of secrets and lies. And Cissy discovers that while Aunt Vera may seem to be wealthy and glamorous, the life she leads is as dirt-poor as the one Cissy thought she had left behind for good. And Aunt Vera's biggest secret is the worst one of all - and it will tear Cissy's life apart in ways her mother's violence never could. This was an inspiring novel about a determined, hopeful girl struggling to rise above sorrow and poverty.