Grounded was a really different kind of book. It is a sweet and bittersweet story. It's funny and touching and sad and not cheesy at all. Grounded tells the story of a young girl and the year after her after her father, younger sister and older brother and killed in a plane crash. Daralynn wasn't killed because she was grounded for not telling her mother where she was going and so she was not allowed to go on the plane ride in her father's plane. This story is just SO real. Daralynn talks about how she stops feeling. How her mother just gets angry and shut-off. It's not a "poor me" story, though, given what this kid has gone through, it certainly could be. But instead it is a funny, sweet story of picking up and moving on and staying, well, grounded.
Because of the good job that Daralynn's mom did on the bodies of her husband and children, she is hired by the local funeral home to prepare all of the bodies for viewing. After a time she also does the hair of living, taking over the local barber shop. There's wacky aunt thrown in, and a sweet, but senile mother, a Vietnam War-torn uncle and a suspicious out-of-towner who comes into this small town (population 420 or so) and sets up a crematorium (which Daralynn at first thinks is going to sell ice cream.
A very quick and beautiful read.
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