![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Pearl’s narration elevates an already-poignant story to a complex, bittersweet examination of why “girls were punished so hard for their love, so hard, hard enough to break them.” There is no escape from pain or death in this narrative-from the wolf waiting behind every door-but there is the suggestion that it’s worth the risk to open them all wide anyway. But Frankie’s tenacious grip on hope draws attention from both her fellow orphans, including a beautiful, gentle boy with whom she shares an illicit prewar romance, and Pearl, the book’s ghost narrator, whose own tragic story slowly unfurls alongside Frankie’s. She and her two siblings have a father who brings them gifts but claims he can’t afford to take them home and who eventually abandons them for a new family. Teenage Frankie’s story is no more or less tragic than that of any other young person at her German Catholic orphanage: That is, it’s heartbreaking. A ghost girl’s narration weaves her own story with that of a tenacious orphan in World War II–era Chicago. ![]()
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