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Dana Reinhardt's 3rd novel "How to Build a House" Coming in May 2008
From Publisher's Weekly, starred review:
Reinhardt artfully parallels the construction of a house with the reconstruction of a broken family in a work as intimate and intelligently wrought as her previous YA novels, A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life and Harmless. Shaken by the recent divorce of her father and stepmother and her separation from stepsister and best friend, Tess, Harper Evans jumps at the chance to participate in a summer program in a small Tennessee town, where she and other high school students will build a new house for a family whose home was destroyed by a tornado. Harper aims to bury herself in physical labor to forget about problems back in L.A., but gets sidetracked when she falls in love with Teddy, one of the house's intended residents. Weaving flashbacks of Harper's home life before and after the divorce into the romance between Harper and Teddy, Reinhardt builds a story within a story: one exploring reasons the heroine feels betrayed, the other focusing on how she learns to trust again. This meticulously crafted book illustrates how both homes and relationships can be resurrected through hard work, hope and teamwork. Ages 12-up. (May)
“When you live in California and have relatives in New York, everything in between feels like a big inconvenience,” says 17-year-old Harper. But even the middle of the country sounds better to Harper than her own home, which feels empty since her stepmother and stepsiblings moved out. Harper is also eager to leave Gabriel, her “sort-of boyfriend” behind, so she signs up as a summer volunteer to build houses for tornado victims in Bailey, Tennessee. In chapters that alternate between recollections of her past year and her Tennessee summer, Harper slowly reveals the events in L.A. that led to heartbreak and then the healing work, friendships, and romance she finds in Bailey. Reinhardt adds great depth to the familiar story of a teen changed by a summer escape with strong characters and perceptive, subtle explorations of love, family, sex, and friendship—all narrated in Harper’s believable voice. Teens, especially young women on the verge of independence, will see themselves in Harper, her questions, and her resilient heart.
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