Miracle got her name because, as her grandmother Gigi tells her, she was born from a dead woman.  Miracle’s father, Dane, was a prodigy and published his first novel at the age of 13.  Miracle likes to spend her days helping Gigi with her work as a medium, practicing dancing, and sitting in her father’s company.  One day, as Gigi is conducting a seance to contact Miracle’s dead mother, the Ouija board tells them that Dane is gone.  They rush to his room in the basement to find that he’s melted; all that’s left of him is a pile of clothes.

Dancing on the Edge explores how our family shapes who we are and what we believe.  Miracle strongly believes in the symbolism of colors and numbers, in auras, portents, and omens.  She starts to question her beliefs when she first meets her Granddaddy Opal and he tells her, “If your mama was dead when you were born, then you was never born."  I picked up this book because it was a readergirlz recommendation in May for Mental Health Month; throughout the course of the book Miracle loses and finds herself again.  By the end of it, I was sniffling and tearing up.  That is the mark of a good book.

Books Read: 1
Pages Read: 244
Time Spent Reading/Reviewing: 3.25 hrs

(You can expect longer reviews of most of my 48 Hr Book Challenge Books in the coming weeks.)

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Interesting Tidbit: Two of the Challenge Participants were students in the split level 3/4 classes where I did my student teaching; they weren’t MY students as I taught level 4 and my mentor teacher taught level 3, but they are still in that “my former student” brainspace.  They happen to be on the list of top 10 coolest former students.  (I’ve only had about 200 students so far, being somewhat new to this whole teaching thing, but still.  Top 10 out of 200, not bad at all.)  I hope I can convince them to participate in the Pirate Challenge when it comes around.