All The Little Hopes

 All The Little Hopes is written by Leah Weiss.

What a delightful novel this was.  I was enchanted by Lucy and Allie Bert right from the very first chapter.

It is beautiful the way the author ties together the two characters voices in alternating chapters.  Their voices are in harmony sharing their viewpoints of the events that are happening to them both through this novel.

Allie Bert grows up int he mountains of North Carolina, uneducated and without the love and communications of a family sharing their feelings. So when her mother dies in childbirth, she is sent away without understanding what has happened.  She is lucky to meet Lucy who is growing up on the farmland of North Carolina.  Though it is only a few hours bus ride to other side of the state, it is a world apart from the rural shack Bert has only known.  Lucy and her family welcome the lost Bert into the family.  They feed her, cloth her and love her.  They also educate her and explain the ideas of how to act and how to deal with your feelings.  This is really the depth of the story, though there is a mystery that flows through the novel as men in the small town are disappearing.  The girls read Nancy Drew and mysteries and try to use available information as clues to solve these disappearances.   

Intertwined throughout this novel is also the story of Nazi POWs working on farms during the war.  This book covers so many topics that all related to hate, forgiveness and 

My favorite quote,  :I do know this - and I spend some of my ten dollar words to make the point: hate is incendiary, provocative , dangerous..  Can Byron hope to eliminate it? Or even keep it at bay? Or will it lie in wait like a glowing ember ready to ignite when the wind shifts?"  This quote is said by Lucy thinking about Byron who is a US army Captain, looking after the German POWs whoa re working on the family farm.

This turned out to be a surprisingly great read .