Synopses & Reviews
After the death of her mother two years ago, Katie moved to Missouri. Now fourteen years old, she lives with her taciturn father and his new wife, who means well but cannot mend the tear in Katie's heart. Lonely, the "smart" kid at school who likes to read and write poetry, Katie forges alliances where she can: with a fellow misfit named Cynthia, with the gentle old couple down the road, and with the three little boys she babysits. When Katie tries to move up in her social world, she ends up losing her best friend Cynthia and learns some very hard lessons about herself in the process. Meanwhile, her ties to the Texas town where she grew up are fraying; when she goes back for a much-anticipated visit, she discovers that she has grown away from everything that once defined her.
In Elizabeth Berg's hands, Katie comes to life on the page with great depth and complexity. True to Form is a superbly engaging novel that resonates with the myriad uncertainties and assorted epiphanies of real life; it will make readers remember their own moments of discovery.
Review
Chicago Tribune In Katie, Berg has created a narrator true to adolescent form.
Review
Boston Herald (Editor's Pick) A convincing teen's-eye view on growing up in the summer of 1961.
Synopsis
From the author whose work "The New Yorker" calls "strong" and "timeless, " "True to Form" tenderly follows a 14-year-old girl's lessons in life after the death of her mother.
Synopsis
Katie Nash -- the beloved heroine of Elizabeth Berg's previous novels
Durable Goods and
Joy School -- is thirteen years old in 1961, and she's facing a summer full of conflict. Her father has enlisted her in two care-taking jobs -- baby-sitting for the rambunctious Wexler boys and, equally challenging, looking after Mrs. Randolph, her elderly, bedridden neighbor. To make matters worse, Katie has been forcibly inducted into the "loser" Girl Scout troop, compliments of her only new friend Cynthia's controlling mother. Her only saving grace is a trip to her childhood hometown in Texas, to visit her best friend Cherylanne. But people and places change -- and Cherylanne is no exception. When an act of betrayal leaves Katie wondering just what friends are
really for, she learns to rely on the only one left she can trust: herself.
Full of the joys, anguish, and innocence of American adolescence, True to Form is a story sure to make readers remember and reflect on their own moments of discovery and self-definition.
About the Author
Elizabeth Berg is the author of ten national bestselling novels, including the New York Times bestsellers True to Form, Never Change, and Open House, which was an Oprah's Book Club selection in 2000. Durable Goods and Joy School were selected as American Library Association Best Books of the Year, and Talk Before Sleep was short-listed for the ABBY award in 1996. The winner of the 1997 New England Booksellers Award for her body of work, she is also the author of a nonfiction work, Escaping Into the Open: The Art of Writing True. She lives in Chicago.