'Marilou Is Everywhere,' And Also A Miracle
Sarah Elaine Smith's debut novel, about a girl from an impoverished, broken family who impersonates a missing neighbor in order to get motherly attention, is otherworldly in its beauty and power.
Cindy, the 14-year-old narrator of Sarah Elaine Smith's Marilou is Everywhere, wants to disappear. The girl feels suffocated by her lonely, poverty-stricken existence in rural southwestern Pennsylvania, particularly after her single mother has left for an indeterminate amount of time, trusting her two older brothers to take care of her. "My life was an empty place," Cindy reflects. "From where I stood, it seared on with a blank and merciless light. All dust and no song."
When another teenage girl from her county
