Story for the Week
Corinne’s education for what she calls “professional dress-up” kicked off this past week when she started university classes. She declared majors in musical theater and digital media with the primary goal of being a stage actress—i.e., professional dress-up.
During middle school and even into high school, her math teachers all told her she could do so many things with math. The ones she heard most frequently included engineering, analytics, statistics, none of which she had any interest in pursuing. It didn’t stop her from taking math classes though.
My husband Dennis was good at math and spent some time working as a bookkeeper when he lived in Trinidad. My dad has always been good at math (but please don’t ever ask him to spell something 😉). When Corinne was small and my parents took care of her while I worked, Mom always read with her because Mom was the reader (Hope You Find the Best Bookstore in Heaven).
Dad did math. Dad did a lot of math. He started Corinne on addition before she started kindergarten. By second grade, she was doing addition and subtraction with three-digit numbers. Middle school introduced her to accelerated math classes, and she qualified for honors algebra I during summer school before her freshman year of high school.
Our state requires three years of high school math. Corinne completed those early when she added honors geometry freshman year and honors algebra II sophomore year. She chose to take honors pre-calculus her junior year, and then she chose to take AP calculus her senior year. She used to complain about calculus (even though she secretly loved it), and I always reminded her that she chose to take five years of math when only three were required.
Clearly, her left-brain skills are strong. But a right-brain career…that became her passion.
In fifth grade, Corinne discovered theater when her class went to see the middle school performance of Madagascar. Suddenly she knew exactly what she wanted to do in her life. So as much as she likes and excels at math, she LOVES performing.
She started participating in theater when she moved up to middle school and stuck with it all through high school. When one of her friends heard her and another friend talking about the hell that is tech week, she asked why they did it. Corinne explained that once she set foot on the stage, tech week didn’t matter anymore. And I can see the joy in her when I watch her perform. It is truly remarkable.
Just before the school year started, Corinne realized that the college credit her AP calculus score earned means she never has to take another math class…ever. And she posted on Instagram about it. She may tutor in college. She certainly has the knowledge, but she’s definitely ready to study professional dress-up. (She also says she now has a love/hate relationship with philosophy after her first week of class, but that’s another blog post.)
In the book reviewed below, there’s a line about the main character that made me think of Corinne’s Instagram: “…since high school, she’d conveniently forgotten math even existed.” Corinne isn’t quite there yet, but she’s definitely on her way. 🤣
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐
3 Stars for Wish Me Home by Kay Bratt
301 pages
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Publication Date: March 21, 2017
Purchased on Amazon.
Publisher’s Description
A hungry, stray dog is the last thing Cara Butter needs. Stranded in Georgia with only her backpack and a few dwindling dollars, she already has too much baggage. Like her twin sister, Hana, who has broken Cara’s heart one too many times. After a lifetime of family troubles, and bouncing from one foster home to another, Cara decides to leave it all behind and strike out alone—on foot.
Cara sets off to Florida to see the home of her literary hero, Ernest Hemingway, accompanied only by Hemi, the stray dog who proves to be the perfect travel companion. But the harrowing trip takes unexpected turns as strangers become friends who make her question everything, and Cara finds that as the journey unfolds, so does her life—in ways she could never imagine.
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Main Characters:
- Cara Butter – almost 30 years old, grew up in and out of foster homes with her twin sister Hana, traveling on foot from Georgia to the southern tip of Florida, picks up a stray dog along the way and names him Hemingway (Hemi for short)
- Luke Dalton – director of a dog and cat rescue in Key West
- Tori Dalton – Luke’s sister, has some veterinary training and helps him with the rescue
- Ava Dalton – Luke’s daughter, who lives with Luke at the rescue
The description here is a little deceiving. I went into this story thinking that Cara was just fed up with her sister and decided to go on an adventure, hitchhiking from Sandy Springs, Georgia, to Key West, Florida. We find out pretty early on that’s not the case.
The book begins with Cara discovering a stray dog following her as she walks along the highway. She starts to think about a dog she loved when she was a kid, and that’s how we learn she grew up in foster care. Cara and her twin Hana went into foster care at age seven. They spent their lives bouncing from one foster home to another and eventually aged out of the system. We gets pieces of their childhood history throughout the story this way when Cara thinks about that time in her life.
We find out in the very first chapter that Cara is running from something. She abandons her car when it breaks down, and leaves her cell phone in the car because she knows from Dateline that people can be tracked through pings to cell towers. She silently admonishes herself for giving people her real name. There are regular references to secrets that she’s keeping, and she is suspicious of everyone.
This really is a story of self-discovery. Cara needs to learn to live her own life on her own terms, without her sister’s influence. Making it to Key West gives her an initial goal, but she doesn’t have a plan for what she’ll do when she gets there. She’s limited on funds, she’s homeless, and she’s picked up a stray dog who refuses to leave her side.
I love the people Cara meets along the way. Suspicious by nature, she expects the worst from people and realizes she doesn’t have to. I wish the author had actually included more of her time with the people who help her. Cara’s back story seems to be her entire personality, which is fair to a certain extent, but it becomes overwhelming in my opinion and puts a negative spin on the entire book.
Cara eventually gets clarity on her past. I don’t want to give anything away because the author takes her time revealing why Cara is on the run and exactly what happened in her childhood. I landed on 3 stars because I think Cara’s journey of self-discovery is great. I’m just not crazy about what seems like a “woe is me” attitude from Cara. A lot of the things she goes through as an adult are trials of her own making.
And don’t even get me started on her sister Hana. We barely meet her aside from Cara’s memories of her, but boy is she a manipulative you-know-what.
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