Book Review: Penny from Heaven

After wincing every time my husband entered the room for my last audio book (a book with fairly graphic child abuse content), I determined to seek out a clean read from the tween audio book shelves at my library. The front cover of Penny from Heaven indicates that the author, Jennifer L. Holm, is a Newbery Honor-Winning author. Thus, I expected to be sucked in more quickly to the story. Alas, my interest flagged for the first several hours, but did finally pick up toward the middle of the story and I ended up liking the book a lot.

11-year-old Penny is an Italian-American girl living a decade following WW II. She dreams of an uncomplicated summer, but confronts a host of problems instead. Despite an extensive close-knit family on her father's side, her mother doesn't seem to trust Penny's Italian relatives. Nobody is willing to talk about her deceased father and Penny bristles against her mother's restrictions. Then, as if life isn't hard enough, she faces further loss and a devastating accident.

As the back cover proclaims, "Penny from Heaven is a shining story about the everyday and the extraordinary, about a time in America's history when being Italian meant that you were the enemy. But most of all, it's a story about families - about the things that tear them apart and bring them together." I fell in love with the characters and felt shattered for them when the truth about the past was revealed. I rooted for Penny to overcome her challenges and for the families to get along, because love covers a multitude of wrongs.