Description:
When 15-year-old Lucy, the protagonist of Sandra Scofield's Plain Seeing, loses her mother, grief compounds with sorrow at the realization that she never really knew her--and now never will. Lucy's few memories of her mother include the days spun out in regret, and the image of her 17-year-old mother stepping off the train and into her own mother's arms--devastated, young, and pregnant with Lucy. Plain Seeing begins in 1938 in a farming community east of Lubbock, Texas, with a description of a family portrait. But there are, in fact, two photographs, and later, while comparing them, Lucy is compelled to tell her mother's story. It is through this re-creation of her mother's life that Lucy finally comes to know her. Almost 25 years later, in "Lucy's Book," her own life has begun to unravel. She flees to Aunt Opal in Lubbock, where she spots another photograph in a Depression-era photography exhibit. The picture moves her to attempt to understand her mother as a younger woman, and the discoveries Lucy makes along the way free her to live a full life, without dwelling in the past. Scofield, whose literary achievements include the American Book Award, again demonstrates her knack for dramatizing the lives of ordinary people and the cauldron of family dynamics.
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