Missing Sisters - Softcover

Maguire, Gregory

3.31

709 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061232033 ISBN 13: 9780061232039

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2009

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She's a skinny orphan. She's never been able to hear too well. And she can't speak too well, either. The only person who seems to care for her—one of the nuns at the orphanage—gets taken away from Alice in a freak accident.

And then one day somebody calls Alice by the wrong name.

Miami, she says.

Miami Shaw.

Miami Shaw, who may be Alice's twin sister.

Who lives only a few miles away.

Who has what Alice has always dreamed of—a whole wonderful family. But is there a place in that family for Alice?

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About the Author:

Gregory Maguire is the New York Times bestselling author of Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister; Lost; Mirror Mirror; and the Wicked Years, a series that includes Wicked, Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men, and Out of Oz. Now a beloved classic, Wicked is the basis for a blockbuster Tony Award–winning Broadway musical. Maguire has lectured on art, literature, and culture both at home and abroad. He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Alice, 12, withdrawn and inarticulate because she's quite deaf, lives in a Catholic orphanage in Troy, N.Y. Unbeknownst to Alice, her truculent twin, Miami, lives across the river in Albany as one of the Shaws' four adopted children. After the girls' similarity causes confusion at a camp where her stay happens to follow Miami's, Alice discovers Miami's existence and seeks her out. Maguire, author of several fantasies, comes into his own with this evocative novel of the late 60's, set in the milieu where he grew up. There's some near-melodramatic suspense (e.g., a fire), but best here are the many characters, all realized in convincing, unique detail--the nuns a rich broth of competence and imperfection, of narrow-mindedness and wisdom; the Shaws, generous but not inexhaustible, strained by the imminent addition of their first biological child to a biracial adoptive family that includes infant twins. When Alice and Miami discover each other, at first everyone is dismayed. The Shaws can't adopt Alice; still, the plans the adults make for the newfound sisters are compassionate as well as businesslike. Even so, the girls, feeling a strong affinity, contrive independently to meet. Following various points of view, the author enriches his third- person narrative with minutiae of the devout Catholicism that suffuses every aspect of his characters' lives, with fresh, vivid (if occasionally overblown) descriptions, and--while centering on the children--with incisive vignettes of the adults and their concerns. Poignant yet bracingly unsentimental, a novel with the clear ring of authenticity. (Fiction. 10-14) -- Copyright �1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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