"deep psychological drama"
For the most part, Lucinda Hunter has not left her
Connecticut home in twenty-seven years. Rarely she will
leave to go into town, but that takes quite a struggle for
her to achieve. Shockingly, Lucinda is the daughter of the
late great actress Lily Hunter and a noted screenwriter in
her own right. However, when her mother died, Lucinda
learned that her father was a black man. Unable to cope
with not knowing whether she belongs to the white or black
race, both or neither, she became a hermit. Lucinda looks out her window to see a young African-
American female playing in her yard. The girl invites
Lucinda outside. Surprisingly she goes and soon a bond
forms between the nine-year-old Harlem resident Katanya
Taylor, in town as part of the FRESH AIR program, and the
recluse. As they become better acquainted, Kat helps
Lucinda overcome her agoraphobia one step at a time. FRESH AIR is an engaging contemporary tale that showcases
how modern communication systems enable an individual to
hide from society as everything can be ordered on line.
The story line focuses on friendship, as everyone needs
someone to care about. Lucinda is an incredible lead
character and though Kat acts more like an adult than a
preadolescent, readers will find her charming too. The
support cast provides the audience deep insight into
Lucinda as Charlotte Vale Allen gifts her fans with a deep
psychological drama. Harriet Klausner
Reviewed by PNR Group Member
Posted March 4, 2003
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For twenty-seven years Lucinda Hunter,
daughter of the acclaimed film star
Lily Hunter, has been a virtual recluse. Alone
in the Connecticut farmhouse that was once
her mother's, Lucinda's life has become a small
thing. Everything she wants or needs can be
purchased online, and her only trips to the
outside world are to the library or to the post
office. It sometimes takes her days before she
has sufficient courage to venture past her front
door, and even these excursions are sufficiently
traumatic to induce blinding migraine headaches. Then, one hot morning in July, as she sits at
her computer near the living-room window, a
motion in the garden catches her eye. When she
turns to look out, she is certain she must be
hallucinating-for out there, admiring the
overgrown flower beds, is a little girl in shorts
and a T-shirt, her bare feet in outsize sneakers.
She can't be real, Lucinda tells herself. But
when she looks again, the little girl beckons to
her to come outside. Bemused, curious,
Lucinda gets up and goes outdoors to make the
acquaintance of charmingly precocious nine-year-
old Katanya Taylor who has, courtesy of the Fresh
Air Fund, come from Harlem to spend two weeks
with a host family.
Taken with the girl's sweet-natured intelligence
and generosity of spirit, Lucinda gradually,
painfully finds herself drawn back into the world
she left after her mother's death. Through Katanya,
Lucinda reexamines her past, and gets answers to
~he questions that kept her locked inside herself
and inside her mother's house for more than half
her life.
Once again, with her singular insights
into human nature, Charlotte Vale Allen delves
into the life and heart of a fragile, frightened
woman, taking the reader on a gentle touching
exploration of how two people-a haunted
adult and a gifted child-connect and
enrich each other's lives.
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