




Part of Second Story Press's Gutsy Girls series and taking place (set in) 1960's Ontario, Sharon Jennings' Home Free presents and depicts what I for one would definitely and with pleasure consider and call a successful and honest (in other words a realistic) picture and portrait of a mid 20th century Canadian girlhood, with eleven year old Lee (Leanna) Mets portrayed (or actually more to the point presenting herself, for Home Free is penned as a first person narrative, is thus narrated by Lee in her own voice) as an engaging and personally relatable mixture of curiosity, frustration and above all imagination (the latter of course and sometimes indeed a trifle frustratingly being rather too overly romanticising and in definite need of some reigning in, but considering that Lee does strive to, does desire to become a writer, an active and constantly rotating, constantly churning imagination is not really all that much of a negative and in fact also rather a major necessity, a requirement, no matter what Lee's strict Prespertyrian mother in particular might consider with regard to the appropriateness of her daughter's literary ambitions, although Lee certainly does way too often take her imagination to an extreme and to allow herself to be ruled and consumed by it).Īnd bien sûr, considering how much of a fan of L.M.
