The Center of Everything / by Laura Moriarty

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Eileen frowns, taking a drag off her cigarette. "She'll go to hell, honey, if she keeps making fun. I know it's sad, but those are the rules." (p. 8)

Evelyn Bucknow wasn't planned. Her mom Tina had her as a teenager after cutting ties with Evelyn's father. Resenting her own father's disapproval, Tina relocated to middle-of-nowhere Kerrville, Kansas where now only Eileen--Tina's mom, Evelyn's grandmother--makes visits to their ratty apartment by the highway. At 10, Evelyn's bright and observant, already percieving how her mother's immaturity preserves their near-destitute lifestyle. A disadvantaged homelife isn't easy, but peer-rejection only inflates Evelyn's animosity, inadvertently making school her refuge during the adolescent years. But even Evelyn isn't immune to hormones, revealed through an unrequited infatuation with Travis, a neighbor boy in love with her best friend.

It's not through absence of initiative that things remain more or less the same for the pair. Tina wants better for her and Evelyn but lacks the discipline to roll with the punches. A man magnet, Tina's never without 'opportunities', albeit ones with consequences like her second "accident", Samuel, whose mental handicap does little to alleviate economic burdens. Yet it's his presence which quietly sparks (or rather settles) something in Tina, a humble compassion little evidenced beforehand creating a responsible mother out of a once-haughty renegade. Between Evelyn's subdued persistence and Tina's evolving maturity, things slowly begin to perk up after so many years of dismal prospects.

No matter how redundant it sounds, it's still true: Everyone has a story to tell. A cliche perfectly describing this story. Tina and Evelyn's circumstances could--and do--exist anywhere, and yet Moriarty's touch adds so much more. It's the small things that subtly connect with the reader: smell of the laundromat, stained carpet, dirt under the apartment's staircase, etc. Apart from the physical atmosphere, it's the emotional quality of Evelyn's narrative--a somber, increasingly submissive attitude--which evokes that identifiable distinction of realism. Altogether it culminates in a vivid description of low-income America where drudgery and discontent go hand in hand.