In the Clear

On her seventh birthday, Pauline rode across the lawns on her street followed by her best friend Henry, he on the blue wooden horse, she on the red. On the seventh lawn at the top of the street, she collapsed, becoming a sudden victim of the polio outbreak of the summer of 1954. Five years later, when In the Clear begins, she has survived, but paid a heavy price. A brace on her left leg allows her to walk, but she confines herself to her house, humiliated at the notion of being seen. Terrified by what Pauline has already suffered, her mother watches over her, forbidding her to play hockey on the ice rink her father has created in the backyard. In the Clear alternates, chapter by chapter, between Pauline's horror-filled year in the hospital five years earlier and her struggles to adapt in the present of 1959 and 1960. At the end of the book, her triumphs in past and present come together and she is able to move forward with new friendships, and a new faith in herself.

Pauline has survived the horrors of polio, months confined to an iron lung, followed by extended, excruciating physical therapy. Now, in 1959, she is five years older, humiliated by her leg brace and awkward walk. She has turned her back on her only friend and spends her days playing table hockey and pretending not to read the books her overprotective mother insists on giving her.She dreams of real hockey, shrunken leg or no, of sending the puck flying across the ice into the net. Her father has made a rink in the backyard, but will Pauline be able to overcome her fears and break free from her mother to realize her dream?