Lily of the Valley

The story of a small-town Massachusetts girl with big-city ambitions, from the author of Hoopi Shoopi Donna (1996), etc. Most people have the tenor of their dreams pretty well established by the time they're ten, and Lily Wilk is no exception. Someday, she vows, I will make something that people will stand in line for hours just to look at and study and be struck by. Then, satisfied beyond belief, they will travel all the way home in stunned silence, reflecting how they have been changed in some vital way by the sight of a thing made by my own right hand. Lilys obsession with creating a great work of art began almost by chance, when she picked a drawing set out of a grab-bag on her tenth birthday. From that day forward, Lily has drawn and painted everything she can get her hands on: tablecloths, fire hydrants, fingernails, storefront signs, dartboards, etc. Shes also done more conventional paintings and drawings, but her dreams of fame have remained largely dormant. Then, however, shes approached by a prosperous local businesswoman who asks her to paint a family portrait and she senses that this may be her chance. Mary Ziemba, Lilys patron, is the owner of a large chain of supermarkets who lives a deceptively simple life in spite of her great fortune. Instead of arranging a sitting, she provides Lily with photographs of the people she wants included in the painting, all of them her loved ones if not exactly her family in the strictest sense of the word. In the process of fitting together literally all the pieces of Mary's life on a canvas, Lily begins to understand better the nature of her own feelings toward family and friends and eventually comes to a new understanding of herself. A bit mawkish but told with a freshness and real grace that make up for its sentimentality.