Date of Review:

Published Work:

Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow

Reviewer:

Beth Perry

Source:

People

Review Excerpt:

(3 out of 4 stars) Innocence, it seems, can be hard to crush: Nine-year-old Sandrine Miller--the straight-A student in 1970s New Orleans who narrates Johnson's heartbreaking debut--is beaten by her mother, abandoned by her loving but restless father and sexually abused by two family friends. Yet she's too young to realize the horror of it all; astonishingly, she remains unshakeably [sic] loyal to the grown-ups who let her down. Until the day she cracks: "I heard what sounded like a thick old voice but slowly recognized it as mine, full of tears, hoarse, broken by hiccup sobs." The only thing this affecting story lacks is a bigger picture, wondering how the wounded Sandrine will fare as an adult, readers may be left wishing Tomorrow could write back.

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