The Cape Ann

Lark Erhardt is six-years-old in 1938, a young girl struggling to make sense of the grown-up world around her in the midst of a the Great Depression. She lives with her parents in a single room at the train depot, where her father works - steadily, unlike many in small-town Minnesota in this time - but she dreams of the day her family with leave the depot behind and build their own home, a Cape Ann, a dream of a house with hollyhocks and a window seat.

Little Lark is the consummate worrier, principally over her upcoming first confession. She worries, too, about her mama, Arlene, whose constant rows with the hard-gambling Willie hang over the family like a dark cloud. She also must make sense of her Aunt Betty, whose domestic situation is far more precarious than Lark's, and her friend Hilly Stillman, a World War I veteran - and hero - suffering from shell shock two decades on.

Faith Sullivan writes beautifully and brings depth and dimension to every character in the novel. Writing from the perspective of a six-year-old is undoubtedly a challenge; I found it took some getting used to for the reader, but ultimately Sullivan's skill as a writer brings a sense of authenticity to The Cape Ann that many books with an older narrative never achieve.

Three-and-a-half stars.