True Places

True Places Sonja Yoerg 358 pages True Places is a beautiful yet heart wrenching story that will make you think about what is truly important. This story is full of love, loss, heartbreak, and a very dysfunctional family. Told with alternating points of view, this novel focuses on Suzanne and Iris, but also has POVs from Suzanne’s family – Whit (husband), Reid (son), and Brynn (daughter). Suzanne, the main character was a wife, daughter, and mother who had become a slave to everyone around her. And in doing so lost herself. One day Suzanne is overwhelmed and has had enough. She just needs to get away from her family and her responsibilities for just a little while . So she throws down her phone and it's constant messages from everyone asking her to do something,when she already had a million things to do. She decides to just drive awhile and ends up in the parkway in the Blue Ridge Mountains. There She finds a little girl next to the woods all alone at one of the overlooks.She looks very malnourished and sick. Since Suzanne has no cell phone service, she decides to take the girl to the nearest hospital. This is where the story of Iris truly begins. Suzanne take Iris in as foster child against the wishes of her family . It's only when Iris is brought into the home that Suzanne begins to see her life for what it is .But can Iris survive in this new environment ? Why was she all alone ? Why was she a teenager but the size of a 6 year old ? What happened to her parents? Why did she live in the woods? Where is Ash the little brother she keeps talking about ? Can the police find out all of these answers or will Suzanne have to find out for herself ? Sonja describes the mountains so beautifully that I felt like I was there. All of the characters were realistic and the plot well drawn out. You will find that you like and dislike some of the character's in this book.Brynn was a spoild rotten brat like many teenagers today. She takes out all of her problems with life on her mother. I could not really relate to such a wealthy family and found some things a bit unbelievable. The story line kind of dragged on in a few places before picking back up. There for i kelpt putting it down . But i always picked it back up because I wanted to find out about Iris. I also felt like it was a bit long. One question that i wanted answered that never got answered was why were Iris's parents living in the woods? All in all i would say it was a good read.

This story has a central theme with the title taken from Melville (per book's study guide): "We can opt to reject the boundary, the shell behind which we operate our lives, separate from the ... world of dirt and leaf and sky... the true place that holds our essential nature..." The central character is an atypical teenager named Iris who has grown up half-wild in the wilderness, but is taken from her woodsy home into the home of a busy suburban family after her mother dies and she has nowhere to go. The woman who rescues Iris - Suzanne - is herself in need of some rescuing, from her hectic life and her loss of self. The story is well paced and the characters (including Suzanne's family members) all well developed, as they each grow toward their own true place in life.