Child of My Heart

It's been a long time since I fell under the spell of Alice McDermott's masterful novel, "Charming Billy," and I had almost forgotten how enchanting a McDermott story can be. Then, recently, I read her short story about Sr. St. Xavier in a current edition of The New Yorker magazine and ran to the bookshop to get my hands on any and all McDermott novels I had missed. Like most of her stories, this book's characters are Irish-American Catholics of the 1950s and '60s. The story's narrator is Theresa, an exceptional teenager (almost unbelievably exceptional, the novel's only flaw as far as I was concerned). Theresa possesses not only exceptional beauty, but also a nature that endears her to everyone she meets. She has a special way with children and animals and spends her summers sitting for the children and pets of the Long Island upper crust. The novel encompasses one brief summer shared with Theresa's younger cousin Daisy. Theresa and Daisy both sense the the fragility of the happiness they share, as they conspire to hide the many bruises popping up on Daisy's tiny body. If there is such a thing as a sweet sadness, then this novel fills the bill to a tee.