THE GREAT UPENDING

Narrator Whitney Dykhouse creates the perfect dreamlike tone for this lyrical novel set in Pennsylvania farm country. Twelve-year-old Sara has Marfan syndrome and needs a heart operation that her parents can't afford. When The Mister rents a cottage on the family farm, Sara and her brother, Hawk, discover that solving the mystery of why he's there could prove profitable. Dykhouse captures the expressive quality of Sara's narrative, which is full of sentence fragments and is constructed like poetry. She gives Sara just the right blend of certainty in her family's steadfast love and growing weariness with her own worsening medical needs. While Sara is the linchpin of the story, Dykhouse creates memorable voices for the eccentric array of people who also inhabit her world. N.M. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2020]