Sunday, October 07, 2012

Top 10 family dramas

Sara Zarr is the acclaimed author of four novels for young adults: Story of a Girl, Sweethearts, Once Was Lost, and How to Save a Life. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Image, Hunger Mountain online, Response, and several anthologies.

How to Save a Life is about two girls trying to figure out who they are and what family means to them.

At the Guardian Zarr tagged the top ten family dramas that inspired her story, including:
One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

Every time I tell someone about this book, I start to cry. Delphine, eleven, and her two younger sisters Vonetta and Fern travel across the country to spend the summer with their mom, who they hardly know (and who happens to be a figure in the Black Power movement of the late sixties). Watching these girls try to figure out who their mother is and why she left them breaks my heart in the best way.
Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue