The Other Shepards

Teenage Holland and her younger sister Geneva, having always lived under the shadow of siblings who died before they were born, struggle to establish separate identities and escape from the oppressive weight of their parents' continuing grief.

Grade 8 Up-A mesmerizing novel about healing and emotional survival. Geneva Shepard and her older sister, eighth-grader Holland, have lived their lives in the shadow of a memory-that of their three siblings who were tragically killed in a car accident 20 years earlier. Geneva, in particular, has been affected and suffers from nearly debilitating psychological difficulties. Then one day, an artist arrives to paint a mural in their home. Part therapist, part friend, part angel, Annie transforms their lives and allows the girls to begin a much-needed healing process after years of perceived secondary importance to their parents. This is a stunning, quietly moving novel that shows the far-reaching aftermath of tragedy in one family's lives. Reminiscent of Judith Guest's Ordinary People (Viking, 1982) but with an air of the supernatural, this touching story is told with insight and tenderness. The probable identity of Annie, saved until the last chapters, is a particularly satisfying twist. The story is told with skill and packs emotion, imagination, and sensitivity into its pages.
Carrie A. Guarria, Lindenhurst Memorial Library, NY
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Eighth grader Holland Shepard eloquently narrates the pains of surviving adolescenceAwhen three of her siblings did not. She and her obsessive-compulsive younger sister Geneva live in New York City's Greenwich Village, in a house "inlaid and overworked in memories too precious to sell." The memories belong not to Holland and Geneva, who never knew the other ShepardsAJohn, Kevin and ElizabethAbut to their parents, who remain silent on the subject of the siblings who died 18 years ago. Though a secret stash of photos of the other Shepherds reveals a warm, demonstrative family, now their mother, whose "eyes are glassy with a liquid that never spills," refers to any display of affection as "Ick." When mysterious Annie arrives to paint a mural for their mother's birthday, her creative expression and earthy demeanor provide the antidote to the dispassion of the girls' parents; she leads the sisters to dispel the ghosts and to make memories of their own. Griffin (Sons of Liberty) spins a taut story of two girls whose tomblike home life begins to squelch them, and who must confront the unknown in order to liberate themselves. In a powerful blending of elements from the supernatural, romance and everyday teenage experience, Griffin's story offers a resounding affirmation that fears are to be faced, not denied, and life is to be lived, not mourned. Ages 10-14.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 5^-8. The specter of the other Shepards hangs over the Greenwich Village townhouse of Holland Shepard and her younger sister, Geneva. The obsessive compulsive Geneva and Holland, who watches over her but borders on similar behavior, live with the knowledge that before they were born, three older siblings died in a car crash on an island in the Bahamas. It is this singular fact that seems to affect everything in their family's lives. Then Annie arrives. The girls find her in the kitchen starting a mural that their father has ordered for their mother's birthday. From the first, Annie's take on life, so different from the fear-based philosophy of the Shepards, beckons them, and before long the girls are doing things they never dreamed of. For Geneva, there is the experience of riding on the germ-riddled subway in order to see an art exhibit; for Holland, it is finding the courage to meet a new boy--and what a boy. Ultimately, the girls take a trip to the island where their siblings died in an effort to make sense of their lives. The hub around which all these spokes spin is Annie, and Griffin does a marvelous job of bringing readers to the slow realization that Annie is not the painter she seems but rather the spirit of the Shepards' older sister, come to shake up the moribund family. Equally successful is the way Griffin mingles the mystical with the commonplace. She paints Annie so carefully she seems as real as a kiss from a first boyfriend, and what can be more real than that? Carefully crafted both in plot and language, this book shows the heights that popular literature can scale. Ilene Cooper