My One Hundred Adventures by Polly Horvath (Random/Schwartz & Wade, $16.99, 9780375845826, 272 pp., ages 12-up, September)
Horvath (Everything on a Waffle; The Canning Season) adopts a meditative mood in this heartwarming tale narrated by 12-year-old Jane Fielding during one pivotal summer. The poignant moments outnumber Horvath's trademark humor, which proceeds from a characteristically eccentric cast of characters. The Fieldings are one of the few families that stay on the Massachusetts oceanfront year round. Jane and her three siblings lead a modest yet self-sufficient life with their mother, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. They gather oysters from the sea, grow their own vegetables and make jars of homemade jam. Each Sunday, they walk together to the steepled church in town with its "woody-smelling pews . . . and soft, much-opened hymnbooks." This summer, Jane has learned to pray, and she prays for some excitement, "the prospect of adventures to be had." Soon after, a stranger appears whom Jane deems "the clothes hanger man" for the way his attire hangs loosely from his limbs. Her mother invites him to dinner, and he takes them to a nearby fair. Next, Nellie Phipps, the preacher, drafts Jane to deliver Bibles with her, and the girl winds up dropping the Good Word literally from on high--while traveling inside a hot-air balloon. Jane's mother takes the family on a road trip to help ailing Mrs. Parks visit her sister and rescues another neighbor's dog from the violent ocean surf. Mother and daughter share a compassion for others, often at their own expense, as when Jane is roped into further evangelical missions with the preacher and also a baby-sitting gig (as a direct result of the preacher's misfired recruitment plan). Several different men (in addition to the clothes hanger man) pass through that summer, and for the first time Jane begins to contemplate who her father might be. Jane and her mother both have secrets, the heroine realizes, but she does not need to let that separate them. She comes to an understanding of many things, not least of which is that Jane feels more connected to than separated from others, and that "all our lives are mundane but all our lives are also poetry." Horvath gracefully suggests that the great adventure is living in the moment: being a good neighbor, tasting strawberry jam, listening to the sounds of the sea.--Jennifer M. Brown
