Hmmm... Maybe I was off ....

The Center of Everything by Laura Moriarty

I did come down with a stomach thing two hours after finishing this book of small town Kansas, so ... maybe my judgment was skewed. I liked the book, but I wouldn't shout out to my friends to run and read it ...

Evelyn is a small town girl from the wrong side of the tracks with no idea who her father is. Her mother is the classic working poor who also ends up pregnant. SPOILER (baby brother is born with issues).

Evelyn is spunky and smart and will get out of this town, but first she has to go through teen age crush/love, religious conversion, and a fast food job at McDonalds.

At moments, the book was perfect. Then, it seemed tedious and predictable. Somewhere in between is probably correct. Evelyn's character seemed real, but her love interest seemed lame and her friendships shallow. I loved her inspiring teachers. Viewing Tina's (her mother) life through the lens of Evelyn was a clever way of showing the pain and reality of her life. I liked that, but I wondered at the truth of it. Would a daughter feel and see her mother that way?

Evelyn's grandmother is a religious nut who drags her into revivals and protests. The best parts of the book are when Evelyn learns to navigate religion and still love her grandmother. I think that part of the book is perfect.

Blurb:
One of the great pleasures of this novel is Evelyn's effort to make sense of the foggy theological claims hovering around her and reconcile them with the world she observes. "In my head," she says, "God has dark red hair and a beard. He doesn't wear clothes, but it's okay, because you can't see below his shoulders anyway. Everything else is always covered by clouds. Jesus looks exactly the same only he has blond hair, and wears a white robe and sandals. This is how you can tell them apart. And Jesus, I understand, is nicer than God, a little less likely to kill you if you do something wrong.

AND

But Moriarty does make it work in this "curvy" novel, whose appeal should extend from women's book clubs to high school summer reading lists. By listening closely to the innocence and perception of adolescence, she's invented a moral geometry that allows her to skewer and cherish simultaneously. There's no cheating in this novel, no phony breakthrough, or precious reconciliation, just a sweet, often comic series of tender moments spun from real-life battles and moments of kindness among unsorted laundry.

Evelyn grows into the kind of complex young woman who would never mock another's church or picket a science class, spit on a teenage mother or become one, disparage poor women or trade arms for hostages. What's best, her mother, the strong-willed, self-destructive woman who makes mistakes she knows she shouldn't, eventually emerges from Evelyn's laser-sharp evaluation with a kind of muted triumph that Evelyn can appreciate. And if we're paying attention, we can too.