A Finders-Keepers Place (review)

Fifth-grader Esther Page is a master enabler, doing everything she possibly can to hide her mother Valley's serious mental illness from the world. She figures that all her problems will be solved if she can just find her missing father, a preacher named Ezekiel, even though her mother assures her that her search is futile. She presses on, however, dragging her little sister, Ruth, to a different church each Sunday while doing what she can to dodge the effects of her mother's fierce rages and impulsive "notions," which have included ridding the house of all electrical appliances so they could live like the Amish and gardening inside in the winter. Meanwhile, Ruth and Esther eat out of dumpsters and hang out at a local junkyard, collecting clothes and objects for Esther's yard art projects. Esther's narration limits the perspective of events in ways that strain credulity and pre-empt the development of realistic characters. Despite the fact that there are no reasonable or responsible adults to be found, the extent of Valley's neglect simply doesn't ring true as something a fifth-grader could successfully hide, even in the pre-mandatory-reporting 1970s, particularly when Valley leaves Ruth at a grocery store overnight, drives like a maniac around their small town, knocks a hole in an exterior wall of their house, and burns down her best friend's home. A series of revelations regarding Ezekiel's whereabouts and a newfound half-brother provides narrative closure but once again do not pass the realism test on multiple levels. While the situation the girls are in certainly evokes empathy and pathos, the lack of credibility and flat characterization distort the emotional register and prevent genuine reader engagement.