Ashes to Asheville

I sort of expected a book about girls named Fella and Zany going on a road trip with their mother's ashes and a dog named Haberdashery to have a lot of humor in it. It definitely did not. This was a sad and sorrowful reflection on death, loss, grief, and all that goes with those things. It was an absolutely wonderful book... just not a funny one.
Fella and Zany (12 and 16) are the daughters of a lesbian couple. Each is the biological daughter of one of their mothers, but they both view both moms as their mothers. But Mama Lacy has died young of cancer. Afterwards, Fella's wealthy, reserved, formal and traditional grandmother, Mrs. Madison, gets custody of her, while Zany stays with Mama Shannon. As the book opens, Zany has broken into show more the other grandmother's house to steal Mama Lacy's ashes, with the plan of taking them from West Virginia to Asheville, NC during the night and scattering them near their old home in that liberal and eccentric town. She ends up taking Fella (still in her pajamas and bathrobe) and Mrs. Madison's dog, Haberdashery, along as well. Things start going wrong with the plan almost immediately, and continue to go wrong the further they go. But rather than the slapstick humor of crazy events in the middle of the night, they are all wrought with sadness. I shed a lot of tears in this one.
(Oddly, I think Richard Peck or Barbara Park could have told essentially the same story and it would have been hilarious.) show less

Set in the late 1990s, a family is torn apart with their mother dies from cancer. Because of restrictive laws, the two mothers were never able to legally marry or adopt each other's children, so the one daughter's biological grandmother fights in court to take her away from her other mother and sister. Now, on the eve of their dead mother's birthday, the older sister comes in the middle of the night to whisk away her younger sister and their mother's ashes so that they can travel to North Carolina to fulfill their mother's last wishes about the scattering of her remains. But their night cannot be any more ill-fated as their money is stolen, their car breaks down, their dog is hit by a car, etc. Will the girls ever make it to Asheville? show more And will they be able to return back home before anyone notices they are gone?

Told from the point of view of the 12-year-old younger daughter, this book is an emotional read. The whole family is still very much in grief over the death of their mother/daughter/wife. No one is coping particularly well, and bad decisions are made by everyone, including this ill-conceived plan by older sister "Zany" to road trip to North Carolina sans adult supervision and despite every obstacle met. I am a little concerned about recommending this book to young children, especially given the number of risky decisions made by the girls. However, the book does address how these are bad ideas (both by the girls who realize it but persevere anyway and by adults who point out everything that could have gone much worse) and shows at least some negative consequences (e.g., the poor dog getting hit by a car).

There is a lot to digest in this book in terms of heavy topics but Dooley treats everything with respect and consideration. Again, I'm not quite sure that I'd recommend this to very young readers, depending on their maturity level, but I do think it's important read to empathize with what others are going through and to see how far we've come (and still have to go) in terms of LGBT rights. show less

A family of two moms and their two daughters are split apart after the death of one of the mothers, The oldest of the two daughters instigates a road trip to where they last lived happily to disperse their mother's ashes. Quite a book, with Fella (short for Ophelia), the younger of the two sisters, narrating the disasterous road trip. What is a family is the heart of the story.

The sisters kept yelling at each other and making terrible choices that resulted in bad things happening! Maybe it's realistic, but I couldn't take it. There was no relief from the stress.