True Colors

I love many things about Natalie Kinsey-Warnock's latest novel - the narrator's voice, the many ways the people of her town love her, the descriptions of the things Hannah (the woman who found her and is raising her) bakes. But I especially like the first lines and the last lines.

The Beginning
"On a cold, clear December day in 1941, when I was but two days old, on the very same Sunday the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, I was found stuffed into the copper kettle Hannah Spooner grew her marigolds in. Even though I was wrapped in a tattered quilt, my skin was blue, bluer than a robin's egg, as blue as the tears I imagined in my mother's eyes when she left me there, with not even a note pinned to my diaper to give a clue as to who I was or where I'd come from."

The End
"One thing I've learned this summer is that the smallest words are the most powerful, like home and mama. And love."