Book Review: When She Flew

When She Flew by Jennie Shortridge (NAL Accent, $15 trade paper, 9780451227980/0451227980, November 3, 2009)

Lindy Wiggs is a young girl who lives with her Iraq War vet father in the Oregon forest--they moved off the grid after he took her away from her meth-addicted mother. Jess Villareal is a police officer, divorced and estranged from her young daughter and grandson. She's good at the job she loves, and her work is her life. At the same time, she worries that she paid too much attention to the bad guys and not enough to her daughter, Nina.

Their lives intersect when Lindy is spotted in the woods by two bird-watchers, who call the police, thinking she may be lost or abducted. Jess and her colleagues track Lindy and her father, whose emergency escape plan doesn't work this time. "We heard them walking through our camp, remarking on everything we owned like they were in the Columbia Museum of Natural History or something, looking at dioramas of cave dwellers and native tribes.... 'How on earth do they keep everything so clean?' It was like they expected us to be filthy creatures that ate raw squirrel meat or something. I tucked my head down and burrowed into Pater, just to feel his arms protecting me. Please, I prayed, Make these people go away and leave us alone."

Of course, they are not left alone, although they are not stereotypically homeless. They go to church, they have a library card, they grow vegetables, they have a treehouse. Lindy says, "My school is books. My school is the forest. My school is Pater." In this situation, follow-the-rules Jess dares to challenge conventional wisdom, possibly at the cost of her job.

Jennie Shortridge has based her novel on the true story of a homeless man and his daughter and uses it to write about a woman who finds her life after losing it and who wants to help a lost family keep theirs. The book is filled with a wonderful supporting cast--a minister named Reverend Rosetta; Jess’s best friend on the force, Ellis Jenkins (whose wife and young daughter provide one of the most touching moments in the novel); a gruff boss; a gay couple with a farm and a K-9 German Shepherd named Larry; and his handler, Chris. Jess's story is told with wit and insight, and Lindy's story is compelling. The girl's voice is thoughtful and poignant; she describes the heron that inadvertently becomes her betrayer, and perhaps her savior:

"The great blue heron stands three to four and a half feet tall and has a wingspan of up to eighty inches wide, wider than I am tall by eighteen inches. I would like to lie in the wings of a great blue heron, in its downy under feathers, and listen to its heartbeat."

When She Flew asks, What is a family? What is safety? How do we love? And ultimately, how do we find our wings and fly?--Marilyn Dahl

Shelf Talker: A warm and wise book about a "homeless" family and the dedicated policewoman who aids them, and finds herself in the process.