With Above Us Only Sky Michele Young-Stone (The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors) delivers a gorgeous sophomore effort rich with themes of family and rebirth.
In 1973, Prudence Vilkas is born with formations on her back that the doctor calls "bifurcated protrusions" but that her father, Freddie, more succinctly identifies as wings. Because of Freddie's estrangement from his parents, he doesn't know that Prudence's abnormality runs in the family: the Vilkas clan produces winged girls sometimes. Despite her father's enchantment with his "little bird" of a daughter, her mother, Veronica, initially refuses to hold Prudence and agrees to have the wings surgically removed. After her parents' divorce, Prudence lives with her mother and rarely sees Freddie. Growing up, she takes solace in her friendship with Wheaton, a creative boy her age who can see the ghosts of her wings.
In 1989, Frederick Vilkas, most commonly called the Old Man, begins having dreams about his parents and sisters who were murdered in his native Lithuania during World War II. His yearning for family inspires him to contact his granddaughter, the child of his prodigal son, Freddie, for the first time. He tells Inge, his wife and Prudence's grandmother, that he hopes she will look like his sisters. They meet, and in once-winged Prudence, the Old Man sees the hope of reviving the Vilkas legacy. Prudence finds a sudden connection with the past through the grandfather who immediately understands her and the grandmother who instantly loves her.
Young-Stone disregards chronological time, instead alternating chapters set in World War II or Cold War Lithuania with chapters set during Prudence's 1970s girlhood or her 1980s adolescence, as well as snippets from a present day in which Prudence is an ornithologist and mourning the imminent death of the Old Man and several years' separation from Wheaton, who left her life without an explanation. The metaphor of Prudence's clipped wings and her fascination with birds enfolds each element of the narrative as the Vilkas family in the past and present searches for different forms of freedom. Despite the pain of war, loss and living in the U.S. with the knowledge that Lithuania is oppressed by Soviet rule, the Old Man looks for hope and teaches Prudence that our roots often show us our future. Young-Stone's bittersweet and complex look at the ties that bind reminds us that "hope is the thing with feathers." --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads
Shelf Talker: An American teenager born with wings learns about her Lithuanian family's wartime tragedies and enduring strength.