FernFolio

Fifteen year-old Tamura Tierney is determined to become a model. Obsessed with fashion, make up, hair and clothes, she’s not going to let the fact that she’s living in her third foster home, with the kind but style-challenged Shirl and Herb stop her from fulfilling her dreams.
Eighty-nine year old Miss Jean Barclay, may be living in the Sierra Sunset Seniors’ Lodge following a hip and knee replacement, but she’s still as sharp as a tack, most days, and hates the saccharine attitude of staff at the Triple S Ranch, as she calls it. After a lifetime of teaching English to Grade 7 and 8, the old lady has no illusions about adolescents and so, when she is paired with Tamura during a student-senior exchange, she sees through the young girl’s polite responses and rejects her gift of purple knitted slippers as the ugliest things she’s ever seen. Since her teacher has come up with the gift, Tamura can’t help but agree, and so two rather prickly individuals form a tentative bond.
When Tamura comes across a brochure for a modelling course, one that promises to launch her into a modelling career, she decides to ask Miss Barclay, the Wrinkle Queen, to loan her the $2,500 dollar fee. Miss Barclay, refuses, initially, but then decides that Skinny Bones could help her realize her dream of attending Wagner’s Ring Cycle in Seattle. A lifelong opera lover, the elderly lady wants to experience the thrill of her favourite operas one more time before she dies.
Skinny Bones and the Wrinkle Queen plan an elaborate subterfuge that involves lying to the Seniors’ residence and Miss Barclay’s nephew, Byron, as well as to Tamura’s social worker and foster parents, then take off on a road trip to Seattle for a week of opera and then to Vancouver for Tamura’s modelling course. Co-operating to realize their separate dreams, the young girl and the elderly former teacher are drawn together and, despite themselves, changed by their friendship.
Told in the first person, by Tamura and Miss Barclay, this book is a warm and wry look at the follies and aspirations of two strong characters who strive against tall odds to make their dreams come true. Another wonderful book by Glen Huser.
FernFolio Editor