The Same Sky

The Same Sky

Amanda Eyre Ward

Genre: Fiction

Summary (from Goodreads):In this heartrending and poignant novel, award-winning author Amanda Eyre Ward tells the story of Alice Conroe, a forty year old Texas barbecue owner who has the perfect life, except she and her husband long for a child. Unable to conceive, she’s trying desperately to adopt but her destiny is quickly altered by a young woman she’s never met.

Fearless thirteen-year-old Carla Trujilio is being raised by her grandmother in Honduras along with her four year old twin brothers. Her mother is sending money home from Texas where she’s trying to make a better life for her family, but she only has enough to bring one son to her. When Carla’s grandmother dies, Carla decides to take her fate into her own hands and embarks on a dangerous journey across the border with Junior, the twin left behind.

Two powerful journeys intersecting at a pivotal moment in time: Alice and Carla’s lives will be forever and profoundly changed. Heartbreaking, emotional, and arresting, this novel is about finding the courage to trail blaze your own path in life with faith, hope and love, no matter the struggle or the tragedy.
 
Marcie's Review:  I'm tired of writing reviews, and I read this book too long ago to remember all the details, so this is going to be short.  Carla's story was terribly tragic, but it was so well done, and she was such a sympathetic character that I just loved the story.  Alice's story was a little less interesting, but she seemed like quite a nice person.  I suspected how their stories were going to connect from very early on in the book, but I wish they had connected a little earlier, or that more of the story had been told after their connection.

Marcie's Rating: 5 stars

Becky's Review:  Oh my, I have no words now that I finished this book.  Normally I am not a fan of books where there are two parallel story lines and the reader has no idea how they are going to merge and that they don't merge until the very end of the story but both stories were captivating on their own that I didn't mind.  Unlike Marcie I did not guess how the stories were going to merge, I thought that they would merge in a totally different, much more naive way.  There were times that I would rush through Alice's chapters so that I could get to Carla's once Carla decided to make the journey to the United States.  Carla's story was so heartbreaking.  Her life in Honduras was so very tragic and her journey was not better.  Reading about what an illegal immigrant has to go through to get to the United States, where life is generally not rainbows and sunshine but better than their previous home, was incredibly sad.  Alice's story was heartbreaking as well but had some humor and quirkiness tied in so that the book was not completely depressing.  The beginning of the book was a little slow for me and I spent many of Carla's chapters wondering how the author had the authority to write about a young girl growing up in Honduras with no mother and then no adult and I was trying to figure out what I would rate it.  But by the time I got to the end I was so caught up in the story and the characters that I loved the book and forgot all my previous hesitations.  While this book is not easy to read because of all the issues it deals with, it was definitely a great read!

Becky's Rating: 4.5 stars