The problem? She's elderly and in a wheelchair. While working on the boat one day, local artist Hazel asks if he will take her out in the boat. He is excited about a small boat that a neighbor has given him to work on, and he is making a project of fixing it and learning to sail. This is hard for a ten year old, and if the summer weren't bad enough, Rusty has to go to summer school for math and his best friend is away. Rusty lives on an island off the New England coast with his father, who works in the local hardware store, his bossy older sister, and his mother, who is currently away at a residential treatment center for depression. The chapter where the two finally go sailing together was wonderful. I also take it as a good sign that this one is well written since I have absolutely zero interest in sailing and yet I found it super compelling. But that's a good thing, right? That the character feels real enough that I want to give him a talking to? I won't lie there were times I wanted to intervene and tell Rusty something. Perhaps his summer won't be wasted after all. Yet Hazel and Rusty are destined to be friends-at least for that summer. Why is she-a practical stranger in a wheel chair-badgering him about taking her out in his boat? Why is she talking to him at all let alone being so pesky about it? When Rusty first meets Hazel, he's frustrated. Hazel is a senior citizen with a love for sailing and a messy house. It seems like nothing is going his way.īut life sometimes gives you what you NEED and not exactly what you want.
But gone away to a mental health institution. (It would be interesting to get a less biased opinion of her.) His mother is gone-not forever and ever and ever gone. His sister, Lizzy, is just MEAN AND CRUEL according to Rusty.
His father is trying-trying hard-but he can't be both mother and father. Premise/plot: Rusty, the hero of this middle grade coming of age novel, is struggling with making sense of life. Startled, I turned from bailing the afternoon’s rain out of my sailboat and saw this creepy old lady about fifteen feet away on the dock, not far from where I’d left my bike. First sentence: “Hey, kid!” a gravelly voice called from behind me.
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