Amaryllis Lilies Divine Nature in the Values for Young Women series By Marcie Gallacher Aspen Books, 1997. Paperback. ISBN: 1-56236-451-0 Suggested retail price: $7.95 (US)
Reviewed by: Robin Parkinson

I am intrigued with the idea of young-women-themed books. I have a daughter in young women and another soon to be. Both are great readers and have liked books that are in series or have related themes. Of all the young women values, this book's theme, "divine nature," "I have inherited divine qualities which I will strive to develop," seems the least straight-forward. So I was interested to see how this book would do.

Amaryllis Lilies follows the life of fifteen-year-old Tracy Barton. When her grandmother dies, her family makes a move to California to be near her grandfather. Tracy finds the move difficult, especially leaving behind her horse, her best friend and other favorite people. She does like living near her grandfather and visits often on her bike. He lives next door to a family called the Montagues. Mr. Montague is an inactive Church member whose son Kevin was never baptized. Mrs. Montague and her son Andre are Catholic. The Montagues hire Tracy to help care for their horses, and Tracy begins to spend quite a bit of time with Andre. Andre is a troubled young man. He doesn't really accept his mother's remarriage and was a witness to his own fathers murder in South America. Tracy, who has her own problems (lack of friends, fatal illness of her favorite seminary teacher, lose of her horse when she moved, and her grandfather's fading health), feels a certain closeness and empathy for Andre.

Some of the characters in the book are cliches, for example the blonde, beautiful older sister, a typical California girl who just happens to move to California, or the absent-minded professor father with a goofy look and a single-mindedness towards science. And yet I found Tracy to be a very believable character. She reacts in ways that seem consistent with how a teenager behaves. I teach sophomores in high school and I'm sure that I have met Tracy more than once. Tracy also has believable relationships with the others in her family. She is jealous of her sister's popularity and good looks but still tries to look after her and prevent her from forming a bad relationship with Kevin Montague.

Tracy's troubles are also real. I meet plenty of problems in a year, from pregnancy to broken homes and every other minor and major problem that you can imagine. The only problem I had with Tracy's problems is that there are just too many of them. Rarely in my experience (and I've seen some pretty messed-up people) does every aspect of your life go crazy at once. Tracy has family problems, health problems, friend problems, and boy-girl problems at the same time. You can see that Tracy could really use an understanding of her divine nature, but it's like she doesn't get a chance. In real life I can imagine a young person who has gone through as much as Tracy coming to a point where she goes out and discovers her divine nature, but there's not much hint of that here.

Still, this was a fun book and kept me reading, and I think young women will relate to it. I sometimes get the feeling that's how teenagers see themselves, just living from crisis to crisis, so maybe that's not a bad approach from that point of view. If you're looking for a gift for a young woman (or you're like me and are young at heart), you won't go wrong with this one.

Robin Parkinson
<rparkinson@admin.nridgehs.davis.k12.ut.us>