Author, Bryn Greenwood has written a love story, a forbidden love story, a reviled love story, but one that is true to the deepest meaning of love. We have our notions of family, but truly, what is a family unless there is love?

I guess family comes in many packages, as does love. Like family, Love can hurt, can abuse, can neglect, can rescue, and kill. Love is both ugly and beautiful. So here is the story of Wavonna, a beautiful wisp of a child, an angel by the looks of her. Yet, the mother who loves her has many faces, the least of which is a loving, caring mother. She is a mother with mental illness and this illness shapes Wavonna and her view of love and of the world. Called Wavy by those who come to know her, those who will care for her even though she has gone beyond the reach of normal, but her view of love and life is hers alone.

Told with the voices of those who are her family, a story emerges of a child who is old beyond her years, and damaged by those who may or may not love her, yet, Wavy prevails. We may not agree with the life she’s chosen, or whom she has chosen to love, but she creates her own family and in that family, there is abundant love.  And as we should know, in the end, love is all we need.

Greenwood’s writing is clear and concise and wonderful even as we cringe in her telling of it. It’s a novel that may not be for everyone, but it is a story we can believe.