The Milk of Birds by Sylvia Whitman (review)

For Sudanese refugee Nawra, committing to a year of correspondence with an American girl means small monetary gifts and a broader view of the world. For K. C. Cannelli, writing to an international pen pal will get her mother off her back. Neither girl, however, is able to write entirely on her own. Illiterate Nawra relies on her dear friend Adeeba to serve as amanuensis, and K. C. uses voice recognition software to compensate for her learning disability. Despite the distance in geography and experience, the girls slowly bond through their letters, each finding a sympathetic listener to whom she can confide her fears and offer her support. K. C. is dealing with some serious issues—her struggles in school, her parents' divorce and father's remarriage—and if she were the leading heroine in an all-American problem novel, she'd earn her share of sympathy. Her trials, however, pale in comparison to those of Nawra, who has been displaced from her home, raped multiple times, made witness to the slaughter of many family members, and become the physical and emotional support of her traumatized mother. Nawra's gentle dignity and steely resilience in the face of such horror is so delicately portrayed, so much so that K. C. and her overbearing mother seem overwrought and overdrawn in comparison. Although background on the Darfur civil war is often clumsily integrated (via the pedantic Mrs. Cannelli), the plight of the refugees will be eye-opening for many readers. A note on Darfur and its Internally Displaced Persons is included.