Keeping Lucy

June 1, 2019
Greenwood's earlier novels of family dysfunction (Rust and Stardust, 2018, etc.) have hooked onto issues ranging from anorexia to child abduction; here Down syndrome disrupts a young woman's life and marriage. In 1963, 22-year-olds Ginny and Ab, drawn together by their oh-so-sensitive appreciation of poetry, fall in love despite class differences--he's a student at Amherst College; she's a working-class "local girl." By 1969, stay-at-home mom Ginny is caring for their 4-year-old son, Peyton, in a wealthy suburb while Ab, who never wanted to be a lawyer, is toiling away in his father's high-powered Boston firm. After the premature birth of their second child, Ginny holds her daughter, Lucy, only briefly before the doctor whisks the infant away, explaining she is "mongoloid" and unlikely to survive long. Once her tranquilizers wear off, Ginny learns Ab has followed his rigidly autocratic father's dictate and removed Lucy to a state-run facility called Willowridge, coincidentally located just outside Amherst. Though distraught, she accepts Ab's decision. What is most problematic in the novel is not Down syndrome as an issue but Ginny as a character. Her passive dependence (not even learning to drive), "willful ignorance" in accepting whatever conditions her husband's family demands, and further "willful ignorance" of current events like Vietnam and feminism make her seem anachronistic. In 1971, when Ginny learns that Willowridge, where she's never visited although her mother lives nearby, is under investigation for mistreating children, she finally goes to see Lucy. What begins as a legally permitted off-campus weekend stay spirals out of control into technical kidnapping when Ginny decides she cannot take fragile but increasingly alert Lucy back, Ab and his family be damned. Poor Ab is portrayed as a spineless wonder even when he succumbs to Ginny's miraculous new strength of will. A serious subject cheapened by melodrama that rings inauthentic.

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July 29, 2019
Greenwood (Rust & Stardust) delivers an unabashed heart-tugger. The year is 1969 when housewife Ginny Richardson, of Dover, Mass., gives birth to a baby girl named Lucy, who has Down syndrome. Her lawyer husband, Abbott Jr. , and his overbearing lawyer father, Abbott Sr., convince her to have the newborn institutionalized. But two years later, after the institute is exposed on TV as a hellhole of neglect and mistreatment, a guilt-ridden Ginny spirits Lucy out of the place and hits the road with her daughter, unaware that she gave up parental rights and could be wanted for kidnapping. Accompanied by her six-year-old son, Peyton, and best friend, Marsha, Ginny drives to Florida to hide out with Marsha’s sister, a mermaid performer at Weeki Wachee Springs. On the way, Ginny tries to make up for lost time with Lucy. But she knows a reckoning with Abbott Jr., Abbott Sr., and the law is inevitable. The author makes Ginny’s transformation from timid housewife to empowered guardian an affecting one. And in Ginny’s road trip from Massachusetts to Florida by way of Atlantic City and the Blue Ridge Mountains, Greenwood explores a country caught between traditional values and the societal changes of the 1960s and ’70s. This is a moving depiction of the primal power of a mother’s love.

June 1, 2019
Ginny Richardson's life seems complete: she's married to a successful lawyer, lives in a beautiful home, and has a young son and another baby on the way, but she can't shake feelings of regret. Ginny wakes up after labor to news that baby Lucy was born with Down syndrome and immediately sent to a school for the feeble minded. Her husband decides they will keep this a secret and only a few will know Lucy is alive. Two years later, Ginny hears that Lucy's school is under investigation for its horrendous conditions, and resolves, with her best friend and six-year-old son in tow, to find and keep Lucy, spurring a dramatic road trip to safety. As each mile passes, Ginny discovers the depths of her strength and ultimately takes back control of her life. Greenwood's (Rust & Stardust, 2018) heart-wrenching, emotional roller coaster of a read also seamlessly captures the transformation of women's roles in the early 1970s. A heartfelt tale of true friendship, a mother's unstoppable love, and the immeasurable fortitude of women.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)