THE SECRET HUM OF A DAISY- TRACY HOLCZER

This has been a weird summer for me.
I haven't read.
Usually I read and read and read, devour books one after another.
But this summer, I haven't read.
I've consulted my TBR list.
Gone to the library.
Checked books out.
Books I really wanted to read.
Started them.
Renewed them.
Abandoned them.
Returned them.
I'm not sure why.

A couple of weeks ago, THE SECRET HUM OF A DAISY came in.
And then it came up for renewal.
I wanted to renew it.
But it was the only book on the stack of 11 or 12, that wasn't renewable.
So this weekend, I sat down, determined to finish it.
I loved it.

When the book opens the main character, Grace, a twelve-year-old girl, has just lost her mother, the only family she has ever known, in a drowning accident. She wants to stay with her best friend and her mother, but instead, she's been sent to live with her grandmother, who she's never met. Through the stories of her grandmother and through people in the small town, Grace puts together the pieces of  her mother's story, and her grandmother's, and her own. This is a story of real  people doing the best they can, of brokenness and healing, of grief and redemption.

It's a book of big life truths.  Here are a few of my favorites.

Sometimes we just need to fill the hollow spaces with what's handy until we're ready for what's true. 220

Sometimes thinking can steal the magic right out of a thing. 246

Sometimes being a mother makes you blind. You think you know what's  best and refuse to see any other way. 251

I think there's a moment in a long stream of moments  when you first know someone, and you are finding your way around their quirks and general person-ness, that they go from being a new person to a friend. 261

How sometimes it took crazy to get to normal.

 A book I definitely want to own for the Grace's I meet this year.