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Connecting Dots

by Sharon Jennings

As a character, the foster child has powerful potential in fiction, combining 19th-century orphan tropes with contemporary neglected-child realism. Notable foster children in books include the iconic Galadriel in Katherine Paterson’s The Great Gilly Hopkins and Sara Moone in Julie Johnston’s Adam and Eve and Pinch Me.

Connecting Dots (Sharon Jennings) coverIn Connecting Dots, Sharon Jennings holds nothing back in her depiction of Cassandra Jovanovich, a parentless middle-grader who has been bounced around from family to family for years.

Readers might already know Cassandra, who first appeared as a character in Jennings’ previous middle-grade novel, the 2009 Governor General’s Literary Award finalist Home Free. That book, told from the point of view of the ebullient, naive, open-hearted Leanna, presents Cassie as a kind of Anne of Green Gables reborn into the 1960s. Connecting Dots gives Cassie – a darker character than Leanna – her own voice.

The main narrative consists of journal entries in which Cassie gives an account of her life. A prologue presents Cassie on the precipice of a happy ending, having finally found loving parents. Normally, such a prologue would rob the narrative of tension, but Cassie’s story is so raw and painful that if we didn’t know we were working toward a happy resolution, we might not be able to bear it.

In her early years, Cassie lives with her kindly grandmother, but the miasma of family disapproval concerning Cassie’s illegitimacy hangs heavily over them. Jennings uses the 1960s setting to good effect. She doesn’t overdo the popular culture references but perfectly captures the particular Presbyterian rigidity of the period. When Cassie is seven her grandmother dies of cancer, and relatives leave it to a casual neighbour to break the news to the girl. Then begin years of misery at the hands of a series of sadistic caregivers.

The child moves in with her Aunt Mabel, who burns the photos of Cassie’s mother and slaps her across the mouth when she tries to hold on to her grandmother’s hairbrush as a keepsake. Soon Cassie finds herself shipped off to Hazel (who uses enemas as a form of punishment) and Great-Uncle Ernie, who beats Cassie and sexually abuses her. The next four homes pass in a blur.

There is a sizeable cast of malevolent adults to hate in the story. This may replicate the experience of a child like Cassie, but it also risks numbing the reader. Jennings avoids this pitfall by regularly pulling out of Cassie’s journal to focus on Leanna, who reads, reacts to, and thus absorbs some of the pain in Cassie’s account. These intervals also vary the tone by allowing Leanna’s personality – kind, uncool, and courageous – to shine through.

The narrative is most intriguing when the two story strands converge. When Leanna reads the journal entries, she is at times reading about herself. This allows readers to compare the differences in the same scene as told to us by Leanna in Home Free and by Cassie. Who is the more reliable narrator: Leanna, who fully admits to embellishing the truth, or Cassie, who seems to take a more direct approach? Leanna appears to tell us everything and more, but what of Cassie’s telegraphic reporting: “When we got home, Hazel and Ernie were waiting. Said they were willing to take me back. I screamed. I punched and kicked and bit. Ernie grabbed me and picked me up…. Out the door. Thrown into the back seat. I won’t write about the next couple of days.”

There’s plenty of room for the reader to imagine, to be pulled into the serious game both girls are playing of making sense of themselves and their place in their families, and the world.

Cassie is a convincingly resilient character. Memories of her early life with her grandmother, her passion for theatre, and her unexpected friendship with Leanna sustain her through the cruelties she endures. The positive ending, happy in a way we could not predict from the prologue, feels earned and satisfying.

Connecting Dots is not as sure-footed as Home Free, however. There’s an odd scene, for example, in which Leanna tells Cassie about how a chance meeting with two Auschwitz survivors made the Holocaust feel real and immediate to her. It doesn’t weave into the main story and reveals a lack of narrative confidence. Leanna’s growing maturity and Cassie’s hard-won acknowledgment of her own strengths are sturdy enough character arcs.

Connecting Dots isn’t a sequel to Home Free, but more of a companion volume. It’s a different lens through which we experience the story of a sustaining and touching friendship between two girls, each dealing with her own coming of age. When I give this one as a gift, I’m going to bundle it with the earlier book for the full stereo effect.

 

Reviewer: Sarah Ellis

Publisher: Second Story Press

DETAILS

Price: $9.95

Page Count: 232 pp

Format: Paper

ISBN: 978-1-92758-362-3

Released: March

Issue Date: April 2015

Categories: Children and YA Fiction

Age Range: 9-12