BLIND FAITH by Ellen Wittlinger
    Category:  Contemporary
    Age Recommendation:  Grades 9+
    Release Date:  6/20/06
    Publisher:  Simon & Schuster
    Reviewed by:  Jennifer Wardrip, aka "The Genius"
    Rating:  5 Stars


    It was bad enough when fifteen-year-old Liz Scattergood's grandmother, Bunny, died.  It's even worse now that her
    mother seems to have gone crazy.  For weeks her mom wouldn't get out of bed, wouldn't eat dinner with Liz and her
    father, wouldn't even brush her hair.  Although Liz understands that her mother and Bunny had a special bond, were
    more like sisters, in fact, than mother and daughter, Liz doesn't understand the extreme depression.  That was almost
    preferable, though, to what happens when her mother snaps out of her funk and finally leaves the darkened comfort of
    her bedroom.  Because now she's found religion--or, in this case, Spiritualism, where the congregation and leaders
    believe they can communicate with the spirits of the dead.

    After her mom's first visit to Singing Creek, the Spiritualist Church, she comes home acting alive for the first time in
    weeks.  Liz is curious enough to agree to accompany her the following Saturday, but Liz's dad is none too pleased with
    the developments.  For him, religion is filled with hypocrites and fools, and the crazies that attend Singing Creek are the
    worst of the lot--they hold out hope to those who have lost someone they love, convincing them that they can really
    "talk" to the dearly departed's spirit.

    For Liz, these new arguments of her parent's are shaking up her once comfortable life.  Added to that is the new family
    who has moved in across the street.  There's Courtney, nine years old and a total joy, and fifteen-year-old Nathan,
    who always seems so angry.  Their mother, Lily, is dying of leukemia and has come home to spend her final days with
    her mother, dubbed by Liz as Mrs. Crabby.  As Liz enters into a tenuous friendship with Nathan bordering on a first
    love, and takes Courtney under her wing, she's confused by her father's anger, her mother's obsession with
    communicating with her dead mother, and the fact that life in Tobias isn't as calm and easy as she'd always believed it
    to be.

    Ms. Wittlinger has penned a beautiful story in BLIND FAITH.  This is the story of hope and faith, of love and loss, of
    life and death.  As Liz fights to understand why she doesn't have the same type of bond with her mom that her mother
    had with Bunny, as Nathan and Courtney learn to live without their mother, and as everyone involved learns how
    important it is to always have hope, these two families will be forever entwined.  A very heartfelt, tender story, you
    won't go wrong reading BLIND FAITH.
Blind Faith
by Ellen Wittlinger