One Heart by Jane McCafferty

Gladys and Ivy are sisters who live together and work at a camp for children cooking.  They are very different.  Gladys is glum and introverted. Ivy is more effusive and tries to break down the walls Gladys has built around herself. A young girl comes to visit Gladys and things start to change.

On the back cover, it is called a ‘charmingly poignant tale of two sisters’ and I like that description.  It is about families and what they mean.  It is about how you can know someone your whole life yet not know what it is like to be them.  It is about changing relationships and forgiveness (including forgiving yourself).  Some of my favorite quotes:

“Words get stuck in your eyes if you don’t let them out of your mouth.”

“..a tattoo on your body’s not too important compared to the things that end up tattooed on your soul.”

“Does time heal, or is that just something we like to say to people? I don’t believe it heals.  Not really.  Time goes by, and the buried pain gets duller, true enough. But is that healing? No. Healing is something else entirely. It happens within time, but it’s not just time doing the trick.”

“It came to me that we’re not really one age at all. We’re all the ages we’ve ever been.”

4 stars (Rated PG for adult themes.)