Some readers may feel that the resolution comes a mite too easily, but most will enjoy the journey and be pleased when Fella’s family figures out how to come together in a new way While the girls face serious issues, amusing details and the caring adults in their lives keep the tone relatively light. The conversations she has with her sister, as well as her insights about their relationship, likewise ring true. Breathless and engaging, Fella’s distinctive voice is convincingly childlike. Fella’s present-tense narration paints pictures not just of the difficulties they face on the trip (a snowstorm, car trouble, and an unlikely thief among them), but also of their lives before Mama Lacy’s illness and of the ways that things have changed since then. The year is 2004, before the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage, and the girls have been separated by hostile, antediluvian custodial laws. The two white girls squabble and share memories as they travel from West Virginia to Asheville, North Carolina, where Zany is determined to scatter Mama Lacy’s ashes in accordance with her wishes. Twelve-year-old Ophelia, nicknamed Fella, and her 16-year-old sister, Zoey Grace, aka Zany, are the daughters of a lesbian couple, Shannon and Lacy, who could not legally marry. Two sisters make an unauthorized expedition to their former hometown and in the process bring together the two parts of their divided family.ĭooley packs plenty of emotion into this eventful road trip, which takes place over the course of less than 24 hours. Ryan’s sure-handed storytelling and affection for her characters convey a clear sense of Naomi’s triumph, as she becomes “who I was meant to be.” (Fiction. Naomi’s matter-of-fact narrative is suffused with her worries and hopes, along with her protective love for her brother and great-grandmother. The annual December radish-carving festival gives Naomi’s creativity a chance to shine and makes the perfect setting for a reunion. Here they are immersed in a world of warmth and friendship, where Naomi’s longing to meet the father she dimly remembers intensifies. With friends’ help, Gram takes the children to Oaxaca City to find their father and gain his support in her custody appeal. The troubled young woman’s difficulties threaten to overturn the security Gram has worked to provide for Naomi and Owen. The unexpected arrival of Naomi’s long-absent mother throws everything off balance.

Naomi, a soft-voiced list-maker and word-collector, is also a gifted soap-carver-something inherited, it turns out, from the Mexican father from whom she and Owen were separated as small children. First-person narrator Naomi León Outlaw and her bright, physically lopsided little brother Owen feel safe in the routines of life in Lemon Grove, California, with great-grandmother Gram.

Becoming Naomi León by Pam Muñoz Ryan