Up a Road Slowly - Hunt (Book #60)

In the lovely book Shadow of the Wind, the author describes how the first book a reader reads and loves remains forever in their hearts much like first love. I agree and this statement prompted me to turn to Up A Road Slowly for a re-read, perhaps my fifteen re-read since childhood. This is a young adult tale of growing up. The story finds Julie, seven years old, recovering from an illness that took her mother's life and hysterical with grief and fear. She is taken five miles up the road into the country to be raised by her spinster aunt Cordelia because Julie's father is busy teaching and her eldest sister busy with school. Julie hates it there at first but overtime she grows up in the home and this is a gentle, slow story about the pain of growing up and the lessons we learn along the way. This book held magic for me as a child and now as I read it fully grown reading this book felt like visiting my childhood once again.