You Are My Only

September 12, 2011
Kephart (Dangerous Neighbors) writes a psychologically taut novel, juxtaposing the thoughts of Sophie, a teen kidnapped during her infancy, and her grieving birthmother, Emmy, who is institutionalized after a breakdown. For as long as she can remember, Sophie has led the life of a prisoner, homeschooled and homebound by a frail woman she believes to be her mother; she has no idea how much Emmy has loved her and missed her. Then, gazing out an attic window—Sophie’s only connection to the outside world—she sees a boy, and when she finds the courage to step outside her sheltered world to meet him, she finds a friend that she can trust. Succinct, emotionally packed chapters capture similarities between mother and daughter, the depth of their despair, their common desire to be free, and their poetic vision of the world. As Sophie begins to find clues about her captor’s secret past, readers will be on the edge of their seats waiting for the inevitable, liberating moment that will change the course of the lives of both mother and daughter. Ages 12–up.

October 1, 2011

Gr 7-10-From the opening lines voiced by 14-year-old Sophie Marks, readers will know that something about her reclusive life is definitely wrong. Homeschooled by a mother obsessed with order, who keeps them moving to avoid the "No Good," Sophie disobeys instructions to stay hidden and makes contact with Joey, the boy next door, and the two old women who care for him. Her chapters alternate with those narrated by Emmy Rane, a young mother whose baby is kidnapped during the few minutes she goes inside for a blanket. Her husband's accusations and police suspicions about Emmy's erratic behavior lead to her incarceration in a mental hospital. Drawn into the warmth of Joey's unconventional family, Sophie gains courage to challenge her mother's prohibitions and uncovers the truth of her past. The dual narratives reveal losses that all of the characters have suffered. Miss Cloris and Miss Helen abandoned their plans of travel and adventure to care for Joey after the death of his family. Even the kidnapper acted from a twisted logic of loss. Although Emmy's and Sophie's stories converge in a reunion, the future remains uncertain. Kephart ably creates two distinct voices. Emmy's fragile mental state includes flashbacks to her own childhood and fragmented accounts of her frantic search for Baby. Sophie's account of the love and perseverance of Joey's family bolsters her own resolve for a different life. Readers will hope that the open ending can include room for them in Sophie's future. An evocative exploration of many forms of loss and survival.-Kathy Piehl, Minnesota State University, Mankato

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2011

The heartbreaking tale of a kidnapped child and her bereft mother unfolds in alternating narratives in this intense and lovely novel.

Fourteen-year-old Sophie has been successively uprooted by the stern, sour woman she knows as her mother, always on the run from people and their questions. Her story begins as they are settling into their latest rented house and she meets Joey, a neighbor her age who lives with two warm and gentle elderly women, a couple, who eventually help her in discovering a horrible secret about her past. In a separate thread, young Emmy frantically searches for her abducted baby but is deemed by the authorities to have suffered a breakdown and is committed to a psychiatric hospital. Though there is never any question about how the two stories are related, they focus on different periods of time for the two protagonists. Though occasionally straying into melodrama, the ripped-from-the-headlines plot is here treated with tenderness and depth. Kephart's deft employ of descriptive language--"Past the door is scuffle and howl, the slow and the fast moving. I see it through the window glass, the glass all scratched with black diamonds"--is extremely effective in setting mood and creating imagery.

Though the initial draw may be the sensational subject matter, readers will come away with much more. (Fiction. 12 & up)

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

October 1, 2011
Grades 9-12 Two tragic stories set 14 years apart form the bones of this novel. Young mother Emmy is devastated when her baby is kidnapped. Fourteen years later, teenage Sophie gradually uncovers the origins of and reasons behind her transient, homeschooled childhood, escaping what her mother calls the No Good. In her sparse, carefully crafted poetic style, Kephart, a National Book Award finalist for her adult memoir A Slant of Sun (1998), alternates first-person narration between both young women to reveal both Emmy's and Sophie's lives. Emmy flees from her difficult marriage in the throes of their baby's disappearance only to be committed to a mental hospital by her angry husband, while Sophie's lonely life changes when she risks a relationship with the nontraditional family next door. As in many of her previous YA novels, Kephart's not-quite-joyful ending wraps up the story with both hope and realism. The intense, sympathetic characters, both young and elderly, and the challenging, often brutal situations they face will move thoughtful readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)