Blackbird: Summary and book reviews of Blackbird by Jennifer Lauck, plus links to an excerpt from Blackbird and a biography of Jennifer Lauck.

With the startling emotional immediacy of a fractured family photo album, Jennifer Lauck's incandescent memoir is the story of an ordinary girl growing up at the turn of the 1970s and the truly extraordinary circumstances of a childhood lost. Wrenching and unforgettable, Blackbird will carry your heart away. The house on Mary Street was home to Jennifer; her older brother B.J.; their hardworking father, who smelled like aftershave and read her Snow White; and their mother, who called her little daughter Sunshine and embraced Jackie Kennedy's sense of style. Through a child's eyes, the skies of Carson City were forever blue, and life was perfect -- a world of Barbies, Bewitched, and the Beatles. Even her mother's pain from her mysterious illness could be patted away with hairspray, powder, and a kiss on the cheek....But soon, everything Jennifer has come to love and rely on begins to crumble, sending her on a roller coaster of loss and loneliness. In a world unhinged by tragedy, where beautiful mothers die and families are warped by more than they can bear, a young girl must transcend a landscape of pain and mistreatment to discover her richest resource: her own unshakable will to survive.

Media Reviews

Kirkus Reviews A searing, soaring memoir of one girl's complicated and almost unbelievable childhood.   Publisher's Weekly It's impossible not to be moved by the young girl's plight; it's equally impossible not to admire the adult's strength and courage in surviving it. Frank McCourt Author of Angela's Ashes and 'Tis The unblinking look of one child at a hard world. Written gloriously and movingly. Marion Winik Author of First Comes Love and Telling Jennifer Lauck shares a different order of memory, expressed with heartrending immediacy and transparency. Laura Cunningham Author of A Place in the Country A tender and delicately rendered tale of a young girl's survival. Diana Abu-Jaber Author of Arabian Jazz Direct, evocative, and emotionally honest, Blackbird will haunt readers with its startling story and its vibrant narration. Gregg Kleiner Author of Where River Turns to Sky Blackbird is Lauck's stunning testament to the inborn ability children have to survive. By the book's bittersweet final pages, you're on your feet cheering for her. Hope Edelman Author of Motherless Daughters This is one of those rare books that captures both the innocence of the child narrator and the wisdom of the adult author....Blackbird is both a tribute to the author's mother and to her own powers of survival. I was so caught up in Jennifer's story I couldn't turn the pages fast enough, yet I didn't want this book to end

Recent Reader Reviews

Rated of 5 by Jeanette
Disappointing
At first I found the book interesting but then it became somewhat boring. It seems that she was always attacking others which I found to be rather one sided. She writes it to portray a child's view but it is definitely an adults view of past...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Mozart
Surprise
I was surprised by the book. It had been recommended to me by a friend. The writing style is completely unappealing and horrible slow. The child like writing is annoying, eg. 'This review is black text and short words.' and only gets in the way of...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Mandy
This is the best book Ive ever read this year and will ever be! It's very moving and there should be no other rating apart from 5!

Rated of 5 by Emma
best book i've read in a long time. i knew nothing about the book before i read it and haven't ever had such a pleasant surprise before a definite one to take on your holidays!

Rated of 5 by Amy
I read 3 chapters and put it down. I got no feeling for the characters and never wanted to read on. This was a huge disappointment as i was expecting much more.

Rated of 5 by Michele
This is truly a heartfelt book. It takes alot for me to become emotionally invested in a character, yet with this novel the investment is immediate and undeniable. A sometimes haunting, and ultimately uplifiting novel that brings to the forefront...   Read More

...8 More Reader Reviews

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• Biographies & Memoirs
  
• USA 
  
• 1960s & '70s 
  
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• Dealing with Loss