healing

After reading The Big Tiny, I am certain I could live happily, just like Dee Williams, in a tiny house. I’m equally certain someone else will have to build it for me.

One day she “had been a normal, middle-class, middle-of-the-road woman with a mortgage and a job and friends, who went running and climbing and paddling, racing in a thousand different directions at a thousand miles per hour.” Then suddenly she was a woman with ventricular tachycardia with torsades, an uncertain future, and follow up appointments with her cardiologist. It was at one such appointment that Williams’ doctor was

Victoria Jones has just aged out of the foster care system, and her case worker is transporting her to a transitional home. In alternating chapters, the reader watches Victoria make her way in the world while learning about her past. Whether looking forward or back, her past, present, and future are riveting.

Like those chapters, I alternately wanted to shake the adult Victoria by the shoulders, and hold little Victoria in my lap. Through her gift with flowers, Victoria meets an array of insightful, compassionate, and loving people. Through the ghosts of her past, she pushes them away.

Victo