Maybe 3.5. A fairly straightforward coming of age story, this time centered around Vicky, a young teenager of Mexican and Cajun decent living in a multi-ethnic, predominantly Catholic neighborhood of New Orleans in the early 1960s. There is special focus on her relationships with her maternal grandmother, her friend Lonnie who we learn early on ends up in incarcerated as an adult, and an elderly Jewish neighbor who survived the Holocaust.

Lonnie in particular is a bit of a mystery, since the book opens with the adult Vicky visiting her in prison, but exactly how she ends up there is a bit murky as she floats in and out of Vicky's life.

This is one of those books where I got the feeling the author was hewing so closely to her own life that she wasn't taking advantage of her prerogative to flesh her characters beyond what she knew of them in life. ( )

Maybe 3.5. A fairly straightforward coming of age story, this time centered around Vicky, a young teenager of Mexican and Cajun decent living in a multi-ethnic, predominantly Catholic neighborhood of New Orleans in the early 1960s. There is special focus on her relationships with her maternal grandmother, her friend Lonnie who we learn early on ends up in incarcerated as an adult, and an elderly Jewish neighbor who survived the Holocaust.

Lonnie in particular is a bit of a mystery, since the book opens with the adult Vicky visiting her in prison, but exactly how she ends up there is a bit murky as she floats in and out of Vicky's life.

This is one of those books where I got the feeling the author was hewing so closely to her own life that she wasn't taking advantage of her prerogative to flesh her characters beyond what she knew of them in life. ( )

Maybe 3.5. A fairly straightforward coming of age story, this time centered around Vicky, a young teenager of Mexican and Cajun decent living in a multi-ethnic, predominantly Catholic neighborhood of New Orleans in the early 1960s. There is special focus on her relationships with her maternal grandmother, her friend Lonnie who we learn early on ends up in incarcerated as an adult, and an elderly Jewish neighbor who survived the Holocaust.

Lonnie in particular is a bit of a mystery, since the book opens with the adult Vicky visiting her in prison, but exactly how she ends up there is a bit murky as she floats in and out of Vicky's life.

This is one of those books where I got the feeling the author was hewing so closely to her own life that she wasn't taking advantage of her prerogative to flesh her characters beyond what she knew of them in life. ( )