Originally appearing at: Voices of New Orleans

Part of Me
By Kimberly Willis Holt
Henry Holt 2006
ISBN 0805063609
208 pages

Author Kimberly Willis Holt has written a delightful multigenerational young adult novel with Part of Me. Set primarily in the small Cajun town of Houma, Part of Me tells the stories of four different teenagers over more than 60 years of Louisiana life. Beginning with Rose in 1939, who must leave her Texas home behind after her father abandons the family, Holt writes about children who seem unremarkable, even ordinary, but engage readers from start to finish. It’s the sort of quiet little book that might be easily overlooked in the face of overwrought dramas and “problems of the week,” but it will most definitely appeal to bookish girls and boys who want to read about oysters, bookmobiles, more than one great dog and why Harry Potter rocks.

Can you imagine, a book about four different kids, over four different generations and all of them are smart and interesting and wholly original without being over-the-top clichés? Will wonders never cease!

Rose and her younger brother and sister have never been to Louisiana or even known about their Cajun grandfather before their mother is forced to take the children and go home. Everything about Houma seems exotic and strange, especially Antoine Marcel, “the oyster man” who takes them in without a word. Soon enough, scholarly Rose learns that there is not enough money for her to go to school; she has to go to work and help out. Spared from being an oyster shucker by her mother, who takes on that difficult job herself, Rose finds herself instead as the driver for the new community bookmobile. This allows her to meet people in all the surrounding small towns and begins her family’s long association with the library. It is also how Rose meets Luther Harp who eventually becomes her husband.

From Rose the narrative shifts to Merle Henry, her son, who loves trapping with his dog Blue and has a deep affection for his Aunt Pie and her wild unconventional ways. Old Yeller is the book Merle discovers one day, and the one that touches his life the most. (Don’t even get me started on the nightmare that is Old Yeller. I refuse to recommend this book to a single living soul although I will not hold it against Holt for having Merle love it. I am going to give you a big spoiler here though and tell you that Old Yeller is not duplicated in Merle’s story, and it has a happy ending for both boy and dog.)

Merle grows up and marries a local girl but finds himself struggling to find his way in New Orleans, or anyplace that isn’t the woods he knew so well around his family home. His daughter Annabeth does not know how to fit in either, and as father and daughter bond over afternoon soap operas, she discovers a new author, Carson McCullers, and her coming of age classic, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Annabeth finds herself reaching out to another lost soul who enjoys good books, but her new friend is the center of school gossip, and Annabeth must find a way to be brave, which brings about a wholly uncharacteristic but wonderful moment in the story.

Finally, in modern times, Annabeth’s son Kyle struggles through a long boring summer with a part-time job he did not want at the local library. Kyle is stuck in a family that prizes books and reading above so much more and cannot understand his rabid devotion to 70s music. (“What shall we do with Kyle?” seems to be the underlying question for his parents.) He discovers Harry Potter while channeling Encyclopedia Brown and solving a library mystery one day and finds himself finally finding a way to connect with his parents and sister.

It doesn’t hurt that the books are just great reading, too.

Part of Me ends quite charmingly, by gathering all of the family members together in a celebration for Rose, who finally has found a way to celebrate her family and her experiences in Houma in the most appropriate way. Sure the ending is sentimental, but it fit perfectly with the stories that came before it, and I thought it was especially nice to see Rose again as it was her deep thoughts that carried the book from the beginning.

Part of Me is an easy book to recommend strictly for the warm way Holt writes about the McGee and Harp families and manages to show both the diversity and similarity that can strike over the course of several generations. Rose’s stories in particular are a wonderful look at bayou life in the first half of the 20th century, and as the book slowly wanders forward to the present time, readers will see how some of that acute originality in the landscape has been lost to suburban sprawl, malls and shopping centers. The family’s continued dedication to staying connected and relating to one another makes Part of Me very much a universal story, but it is the glimpses of Houma that give the book an added depth and make it truly an original tale.