Far from the Tree

I completely loved this book, which chronicles the journeys of biological siblings Grace, Maya and Joaquin, who all share a biological mother, but were adopted/put into foster care as babies and grew up in separate households.

Robin Benway does a fantastic job of drawing you into heartstring-tugging stories with each of these guys… Grace, who just had a baby of her own that she put up for adoption, Maya who feels like the “what doesn’t belong in this picture?” in her family, and Joaquin, who broke my heart most of all, having been bounced from foster home to foster home his entire life.

I absolutely loved watching Joaquin evolve over the course of the book from the boy who was so isolated and contained to the Joaquin who show more defended his sister, and called Grace his sister, to the Joaquin who could open up in therapy, to Joaquin on adoption day. So nicely done, the layers peeling back of his life. And I really liked watching Maya’s story slowly unravel, with regards to her mother as well. What a heartbreaking and joyous journey that was. . I completely recommend this book. It will break your heart over and over in the poignant moments, but ultimately ends on moments of triumph, and makes for a heartwarming read on the subject of adoption.

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Top-notch realistic YA fiction. So good it makes me want to go back and re-read Emmy & Oliver. This one isn't a romance, though: it's the tale of three biological half-siblings, scattered to foster and adoptive homes, who find each other and eventually go in search of their bio mom. Each teen is dealing with some major issues: Grace, at 16, has just had a baby that she gave up for adoption and is returning to her junior year of high school, but the experience has made her curious about her own birth mother. Maya, at 15, relies on her girlfriend Claire for stability as her picture-perfect (but one of these things is not like the others) life begins to crumble: her mother is an alcoholic, her parents are divorcing, and her younger sister show more Lauren - their parents' biological daughter - can't understand Maya's feelings. Finally, Joaquin, the oldest: he lives now with Mark and Linda, who want to adopt him, but after a lifetime in the foster system and one near-adoption, he's wary - and he pushes his girlfriend Birdie away, too, feeling that he can't give her the kind of life she wants.

Grace, Maya, and Joaquin find strength and connection in each other, eventually revealing their secrets and supporting each other. At last, Grace convinces the others to go looking for their biological mother. (Spoiler alert: they don't find her, but they do find her sister, their aunt, who is able to tell them a lot about her.) A beautiful, realistic novel about family - bio and adoptive - and relationships of all kinds.

Quotes

She wanted to belong to them, wanted them to belong to her the way that no one else in the world could. (Maya, on the siblings' physical resemblance, 72)

He wished they would go away, because nothing was worse that someone wanting you to talk when the words you needed to say hadn't even been invented yet. (Joaquin, 84)

Pity wasn't strength, and Grace had had a hard enough time holding it together. She didn't want both her parents and her to crumble, not at the same time. (97)

It was like her heart was being stabbed with the most immense kind of love, and regardless of its source, the pain was still too much to handle. (Grace, 138)

That sharp, piercing love pain stabbed her right between the ribs. (Grace, 146)

"...We tell Milly every single day that her biological mother is brave and beautiful and loved her in ways that we will never be able to describe to her...
...We can only imagine the conflicting emotions that you might have had in the past thirty days, but please know that we cherish and adore Milly more than anything else in the universe, that she is our baby girl, but that she was once yours, too, and that the grace of your gift will never be forgotten." [Letter from Grace's baby's adoptive parents, p. 151-152]

Grace knew that she couldn't go back, but as she stood in her messy room, one hand over her stomach as if to keep Peach there, sh also realized that she had no idea how, exactly, to go forward. (153)

They had always had an agreement that if Grace wanted to know anything, all she had to do was ask, but that put all the pressure, all the responsibility, on Grace. There were questions she didn't even know how to ask... (181)

...that no matter what happened...your siblings will still be there, like a bookend that keeps you upright when you feel like toppling over. (Maya, 203)

"Why is it always on me to talk to you? Why can't you talk to me?" (Grace to her parents in therapy, 267)

The older she got, the more human her parents seemed, and that was one of the scariest things in the world. She missed being little, when they were the all-knowing gods of her world, but at the same time, seeing them as human made it easier to see herself that way, too. (Grace, 268) show less

Had you asked me several months ago what genres I enjoy reading, I would have not have said realistic YA. If I'm going to read about teens, I would have told you, they'd better be able to do magic, or live in an alternate universe, or be living through armagedon, or use magic to survive armagedon in an alternate universe. Or be involved in a murder. (Homicidal teens, a la Heathers, also float my boat.) But realistic YA? No, thank you.

Excuse me, I just need to take a drink to wash down my own words. Cuz I'm eating them after giving three realistic YA novels 5 stars in the past few months.

I read Far from the Tree for my book club, but had been on my radar before that. Both of my older siblings are adopted, so a novel about three show more half-siblings (two of whom were adopted as infants, while the other was shuffled between foster homes) sounded interesting.

For various reasons, I completely connected with these characters: 17-year-old Joaquin who has bounced through too many foster homes to get comfortable anywhere, 16-year-old Grace who is trying to figure out who she is after an unexpected pregnancy, and 15-year-old Maya who uses her sarcasm to hide her tumultuous family life. My heart broke for all of them (I was a sobbing mess through much of this book.), but I love the bond they formed. The character development through the novel was immense, but also believable.

The supporting characters were just as great. None of the adults are perfect, but they're trying. The portrayal of adoptive parents is balanced and compassionate. The teens are mostly believable, although some are much more mature than I remember being at that age. (Rafe, I'm looking at you. Rafe is way too good to be true. I was starting to think he was a figment of Grace's imagination. I mean, he showed up in the bathroom after she punched the douche-canoe. Then he happens to work at the store where she returns her mom's insomnia purchase. But she's always alone. Of course, then the nosy neighbor sees Grace with Rafe and my theory was blown.)

Despite the frequent f-bombs and a random joint, this book is pretty tame. (Obviously Grace had sex -- no immaculate conception here -- but it took place before the novel opens. Her fall from grace is commented on -- she's a social pariah, while her ex-boyfriend/baby-daddy gets crowned homecoming king.) There are so many great messages here -- about family, about second (and third and fourth) chances, about compassion and empathy, about mayonaisse (although there really should be some ketchup mixed with it). And even though I'm confessing that I went through a mound of tissues, I also laughed (maybe even snort-laughed) at times. This book gave me all the feels, as the kids say these days.

Read for book group, August 2018. show less

Far From The Tree is the story of three siblings, separated at birth—Grace and Maya were both relinquished at their births while Joaquin was removed from their mother’s care around age 1. None of them knew about each other before now. While Grace and Maya seem to have had it “easy” by being adopted, you quickly realize that families are complicated, whether formed by choice or blood. Joaquin, having been in foster care for almost seventeen years, seems to finally have it good and yet, people can always disappoint you. As the three come together and begin to search for their birth mom, the search will turn up more than any of them ever expected.

The more YA I read as an adult, the more I wish YA had been like this twenty years ago show more (yes, I am that old), or that I had known where the books like this were when I was the target audience of the YA author. Far From The Tree tackles tricky subjects—teen pregnancy, adoption, foster care—with grace and depth while using situations and language that are appropriate for a high school audience. Even the children’s birth mother is shown grace as the children discover who she is and how she came to make the choices she made. As a final note, Benway also made an effort to include diverse characters—Maya is a lesbian while Joaquin is mixed-race. I loved these characters, I appreciated the depth Benway brought to the adoption conversation, and I never felt like I was being preached at or that Benway was taking the easy way out on difficult topics. Studies show that reading books makes readers more empathetic—with books like Far From The Tree I can see how that is the case. This is a book I highly recommend for both adults and young adults alike.

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Typical of a lot of YA fiction, Far from the Tree by Robin Benway is chock full of teenage angst and issues, but in an unusually well done way. Told through voices of three biological siblings that find each other as teenagers, we learn their histories and their current adversities that include a recent pregnancy, an alcoholic parent, and a troubling past with a variety of foster homes. It’s definitely a lot to believe, but Benway handles it all with strong, authentic voices and a deft hand that makes it all feel very real. I highly recommend this book for regular YA readers, and others looking for something a little different than their usual read. PK

I was given an ARC by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

This was THE BEST book of 2017. Perfect topics, perfect (flawed but perfectly fitting) characters, perfect pacing, perfect POV changing. I just loved this book and all of the emotional situations it talked about. There’s some pretty heavy material here and it was handled so nicely. I’d recommended this book to seriously everyone.

I loved this book. One quibble: the character development for two of the romantic interests (Birdie and Claire) was pretty flat. I never got a good sense of who either of them is. But that was a small thing, since the main characters are all very well drawn and vibrant.