Backwater

Backwater is a story about family. The Breedlove family, to be exact. They have been lawyers for generations, ever since their ancestor had written on his tombstone: "O, wouldst that all my sons be lawyers/Lest my heart break with the anguish/That they have become lesser men". What a lot to live up to - and what kind of person would want that on their tombstone? At any rate, the guilt trip worked, and almost all of the Breedloves turn out to be lawyers.

The main character, Ivy, wants to be an historian and is working on a history of their family, which is a point of contention in their family. Most of them think she is wasting her time, and should be working toward law school anyway, and are very upset about the whole thing - especially since she keeps bringing up all those Breedloves who weren't lawyers. Ivy ends up taking a trip to visit her aunt, who is a hermit, in order to understand her family better and ends up bringing the whole family back together and healing some very old wounds.

This book is very clean, and is a great discussion starter. Every family has its "skeletons", and things that they prefer not to talk about, but it's important to keep communication lines open and to allow and answer questions honestly. The Breedlove family had never allowed that and was on the verge of falling into pieces when Ivy started finding out the truth. Instead of the truth being as destructive as they had always feared, it turned out that the lies and fear had actually been the problem all along. That's true for every family, and I think this book is a wonderful way to start teaching children that families are not perfect, but that they can be encouraging and loving as they are.