Teenreads.com -- HOW I SAVED MY FATHER'S LIFE (AND RUINED EVERYTHING ELSE) by Ann Hood

HOW I SAVED MY FATHER'S LIFE (AND RUINED EVERYTHING ELSE)
Ann Hood
Scholastic Press
Fiction
ISBN: 9780439928199
224 pages

Madeline Vandermeer decides to become a saint after she performs a miracle or two when she is 11. Her significant miracle (the other one involved moving a glass of water across a table by brain power alone) happens when her journalist father travels to Idaho by himself. One night during his trip, Madeline is awakened by a man's voice repeating her name. She falls asleep again to dream of snow in Idaho, and wakes up convinced that her father is in danger of being killed by an avalanche.

Madeline dresses and slips out to hurry to a Catholic church, where she prays for God to save her father. When she finally arrives home, she is greeted by the news that her father has survived a horrendous avalanche. From that moment on, Madeline is convinced that she is on an inevitable path to sainthood.

Her father arrives home a changed man. He seems depressed and says he needs to spend time working in New York. In fact, he becomes famous after writing about surviving the avalanche. For once, their family seems to be headed for financial stability. But then both parents break the news to Madeline and her little brother, Cody: they are getting divorced, and Dad is moving to New York City.

Madeline is sure that when she performed her big miracle, she also ruined the rest of her life. She is convinced that she can right this situation by performing just one more miracle. But in the meantime, as she writes letters to the Pope and befriends a girl in a large Italian Catholic family, she blames her mother for what has happened to the family. Mom is seriously depressed, barely coping, and bewildered by Madeline's sudden fascination with a religion foreign to her own family.

Madeline continues with her belief that she can fix everything by performing another miracle, despite the fact that her father remarries. His new wife, Ava Pomme, is a well-known gourmet tart baker, and they have a baby girl named Zoe. In fact, this new family, in Madeline's eyes, is a real family, while the fractured group of Mom, Madeline and Cody is no longer a family at all --- just an unhappy group who happens to live together. Madeline yearns to be a part of her father's family, who is unavoidably seen on television shows such as "Oprah" where the avalanche survival story is recounted repeatedly.

When Mom announces that the magazine she writes food columns for will send the three of them to Italy on vacation, Madeline’s dad announces that he, Ava and Zoe will also be in Italy. Madeline and Cody spend vacation time with both parents --- and Madeline discovers the most unexpected miracle of all.

Madeline, Cody and their mother are appealing characters, and I empathized with Madeline's heartbreak and anger. Although some of the people in her life seem a little less well-rounded and a few story threads (such as Madeline's ballet) feel a bit flimsy, readers will be compelled to find out how Madeline’s story concludes.

--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon (terryms2001@yahoo.com)

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