Billie Standish Was Here

by Nancy Crocker

Overview

CAN ONE UNLIKELY FRIENDSHIP SAVE A LIFE?

Billie Standish has pretty much no one. Her parents are too caught up in their own lives, and the only two girls in town her age want nothing to do with her. When it looks like a nearby levee might break, and Billie's elderly neighbor, Miss Lydia, is the only other person besides her family to stick around, a friendship is born out of circumstance. What happens during that time, in that empty town, is a tragedy that Billie can't bear alone. Can the love of one woman nearing the end of her life save the life of a young woman just at the beginning of living hers?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781481444569
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Publication date:	01/27/2015
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Nancy Crocker is a native of Missouri who started her career as a singer and appeared with Loretta Lynn at age thirteen. She graduated from Columbia College and since then has been acting and writing. Her work has appeared in the American Heritage Anthology, and she is the author of the picture book Betty Lou Blue, published by Dial. This is her first novel. Nancy lives with her husband and son near a lake in Minneapolis, where they enjoy fishing. You can visit Nancy at www.nancycrocker.com.

Editorial Reviews

A lonely girl in rural Missouri develops a friendship with her elderly neighbor that transforms her life. Adrift and isolated, 11-year-old Billie Marie has no friends and feels invisible to her self-absorbed parents until she meets her neighbor, Miss Lydia. Miss Lydia may look like "every grandma in the world," but she's more interesting than anyone Billie has ever met. Soon the two are inseparable. But Billie's childhood ends when Miss Lydia's son, Curtis, brutally rapes her. In the days and years that follow, Miss Lydia and Billie share a terrible secret as they continue to love and protect one another. Mentor and surrogate mother, Miss Lydia provides Billie with the love and support she needs while Billie gives meaning to Miss Lydia's life. When Miss Lydia ages and eventually fails, Billie knows exactly what she must do. Set in the late 1960s and early '70s, this tender, touching account of intergenerational friendship provides rich historical context for two memorable female characters who redefine the meaning of family and love. (Fiction. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews