The Ritual Effect (Michael Norton)

 

This book got better and better the deeper I got into it. It made me think of the things that I identify as routines and pushed me on to thinking about how I can make those things more meaningful. It made me think of some of my religious practices and whether or not they're just routines or if they're ritualistic and meaningful. If they matter, they should be meaningful and that is really inner work.

For me, five stars means I thought it was great and I'd definitely read it again.

I started to notice rituals and as a result, could be more mindful of the practices. I noticed other people doing it too. We went to a funeral and one person talked about how the person they were honoring used to tap every log three times before he put it in the fire when they were camping....and now, in memory of this friend, he taps every log three times. 

Notes and ideas:
p. 25
Rituals are emotion generators. Once a particular set of movements become linked to a particular emotion, that set of actions, that ritual, is then available to summon the relevant emotion - not unlike a catalyst in the kitchen such as sourdough bread starter. 

- I started using the time when I get out of the shower as a ritual time. I light a candle and while I'm drying off and lotioning up, I think of the covenants that I have made in the temple. I go over them in my mind and repeat some of the phrases we use in the temple. It has made a big change in my life, helping me want to do better at keeping those covenants.
p. 78 After a childhood spent in the world of food and fine dining, Michaud had hospitality on her mind when she arrived in New York. what she discovered, however, was not the city that never sleeps. Instead, it was a city shattered by lockdown and looking to find its social footing. In 2022, although people were ready to socialize again, a mood of trepidation hung over many social gatherings. For people such as Michaud, young transplants still new to the city, the question was, How do you possibly find IRL friends after two years of Zoom happy hours? Instead of starting with people already in her network, Michaud took a bolder and bigger chance. She identified six strangers-friends of friends and people she found on Bumble BFF, a friendship app-and invited them to a meal in her home. She didn't call her party Dinner with Strangers, however. Instead, she sent out her invites and welcomed people she had never met to join her for an intimate evening around her dining table. It's a "Dinner with Friends," her invite stated. A promise or a pipe dream?
As documented in the New York Times, one by one, women arrived for dinner - total strangers - and learned, once again, how to have a conversation with new people in the same room. What does it look like to make friends again? The question was on everyone's mind after the worst of the pandemic. Researchers estimate that people's social networks decreased in size an average of 16 percent during COVIDs lockdowns and in the following year of social distancing.
When the strangers at Michaud's dinner party erupted into laughter or split off into side conversations, she knew they had all found a bit of chemistry. Before the night was over, she connected everyone on a group chat and added it to her growing collections of text streams, each from a different cohort of guests at one of her dinner parties. She now has a waiting list of more than eight hundred people to attend oen of her "stranger" events - primarily young women, all with a simple intent: today I might make a friend.

p. 144 
Everyday family meals offer another opportunity for reinvention. In the United States, one in five family meals are now consumed in a car, and close to three-quarters are eaten outside the home. Fewer than 33 percent of American families eat together at an actual table more than two times a week.
An abundance of research over the past two decades has confirmed the power of reviving this ritual. In 2012, for example, a survey conducted by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University found that regular family dinners were linked to a decreased rate of substance abuse in teenagers and an increase in feelings of connectedness between adolescents and their parents. One study of nine-three parents wit ha first-grader showed that the benefits of mealtime rituals are particularly pronounced for boosting relationships between fathers and daughters, family members who otherwise spend less time together. It's not a question of if for most families; it's a question of how. Between sports schedules, after-school jobs, commutes and school days and work meetings that run late, how can we make the family meal into a meaningful event?
Psychiatrist Anne Fishel has some ideas. Fishel directs the FAmily and Couples Therapy Program at Massachusetts Genreal Hospital, where she saw a need for more guidance on making this meal happen. She started the Family Dinner Project to help families add a touch of ritual back into their lives. The project is designed to transform family meals from habits to rituals; that is, from empty routines (this is what we do) to meaningful experiences that connect family and enrich the lives of children (this is who we are).
Rishel starts small. She recommends picking one meal, or even one snack time, when the family commits to being together - which often means poring through everyone's schedule to find that single thirty-minute window that works for all members. The key is to pick just one. Thinking that family dinners are all-important can be self-defeating if we focus on the impossibility of having dinner (or any meal) together every day. it's important to be realistic about the time you have.
It's also worth starting small on the food, too - while home-cooked healthy meals are best for everyone, the stress of preparing an entire meal from scratch is another barrier to getting started. As in so many other areas of life, the great can be the enemy of the food. What Fishel has in mind is decidedly more playful and improvisational: think less Sunday roast and more silly snack time when the family eats popcorn together on Tuesday evening.

p. 158 on death and the process after the funeral is over:
Literally, the United States has no law requiring bereavement leave.
As anyone who has experienced grief knows, this is not how the process works. In one study of 233 bereaved individuals followed for twenty-four months after the death of a loved one, disbelief peaked at one month after the loss, yearning peaked at four months, anger peaed at five months, and depression didn't peak until six months. Unfortunately, we often put pressure on ourselves to move on, to stop thinking about the person, to "get over it".

Goodreads says:

In the bestselling tradition of Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit and Angela Duckworth’s Grit, a renowned social psychologist demonstrates the power of small acts—and how a subtle turning of habits into rituals can add purpose and pleasure to life.

Our lives are filled with repetitive tasks meant to boost productivity—what we come to know as habits. Over time, these habits (for example, brushing your teeth or putting on your right sock first) are done on autopilot. But when a layer of mindfulness accompanies a habit—when we focus on the precise way an act is performed—a ritual has been created. Now, an everyday act goes from black-and-white to technicolor. And as author Michael Norton explains here, it’s these rituals that make life worth living.

Think of the way you savor a certain beverage, the care you take with a certain outfit that only gets worn on special occasions, the unique way that your family gathers around the table at the holidays, or the secret language you enjoy with your significant other. To some, these behaviors may seem quirky, but because rituals matter so deeply to us on a personal level, they saturate our lives with purpose and meaning. Rituals can heal a community experiencing a great loss, guide a speaker through a difficult presentation, drive a stadium of sports fans to ecstasy, inspire courage in soldiers going into combat, and help us rise to challenges and realize opportunities. Among those who have made effective use of rituals are Maya Angelou, Keith Richards, Barack Obama, and Steve Jobs. Drawing on decades of original research, author Michal Norton reveals that shifting from a “habitual” mindset to a “ritual” mindset can both enhance performance and add meaning to your life.

Compelling, inspiring, and practical, The Ritual Effect takes us on a fascinating tour of the intention-filled acts that drive human behavior and shows us how to create simple rituals to imbue everyday life with a sense of purpose and joy.

The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot (Marianne Cronin)

 

This book just got better and better as I read. The author is a great writer. Her metaphors and literacy connections she makes side by side as she puts the character's lives' stories together are brilliant. 

It isn't often that I actually cry when reading....but parts of this book left me in a puddle.

I was left with so many questions. This book touched on our society's inability to stand by people to the end and to think that disease and disability make someone disposable. 

Although the family connections were sad, the community that came together to support each other was beautiful. The lessons in having a purpose or project in your dying days was profound.

Re: The Title: The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

p. 44 In honor of my own vanity, at the bottom of my painted star, in yellow and using the thinnest brush I could find, I wrote Lenni, aged 17. Seeing this, Margot did the same. Margot, she wrote, 83, And then we put them side by side, the two stars against the dark.
Numbers don't mean a lot to me. I don't care about long division or percentages. I don't know my height or my weight and I can't remember my dad's phone number, though I know I used to know it. I prefer words. Delicious, glorious words. 
But there were two numbers in front of me that matters, and would matter for the rest of my numbered days. 
"Between us," I said quietly, "We're a hundred years old."

Characters: 

Linnea Pettersson (age 17)

Margot (age 83)

Dawn (counselor)

Father Arthur (minister)
Jacky -head nurse)

The Temp

Pippa (art teacher)

New Nurse - not sure why she was always referred to as New Nurse?

Lenni's mother (in Sweden most of the book)
Lenni's father

Paul (porter)

Walter and Elise and various old people in the art room

Johnny (Margot's first husband)

Meena (Catherine Amelia Houghton)
Humphrey James (Margot's second husband)

Jeremy David Star (Meena's son)

The professor Meena worked for

Words of the Wiser

p. 38 Father Arthur: Those who ask questions and return to God are better than they who never ask questions and only pay lip service to their religion.

Re: Lenni and Margot dying [see Memory Moment p. 42] Margot and I both watched her try to explain. "Your heart is beating and your eyes are seeing and your ears are hearing. You're sitting in this room completely alive. And so you're not dying. You're living. She took in Margot.  "You both are."

It simultaneously made perfect sense and no sense at all.

    (people really are uncomfortable with the idea of death, it seems!)

p. 152 "Meena was right...about not giving chase...what she said to you when you were looking for Johnny about waving someone off into their new life but not feeling the need to follow. Letting the people who need to leave, leave. Allowing them to be free."

Contrasts and Contradictions

p. 41 "What are you doing here?" she asked, and I knew she meant the Rose Room, but I think it's best to be honest, so I told her the truth.
"They say I'm doing to die."
There was a moment of silence between us as Margot studied my face. She looked like she didn't believe me.
"It's a life-limiting thing," I said.
"But you're so..."
"Young, I know."
"No, you're so..."
"Unlucky?"
"No," she said, till looking at me like she didn't believe it. "You're so alive."

p. 134 My body was taking a stand, and I sometimes had to stand with it. We were a team. Sometimes.

p. 169 We have practiced for death every night. Lying down in the dark and slipping into that place of nothingness between rest and dreams where we have no consciousness, no self, and anything could befall our vulnerable bodies. We have died each night. Or at least, we have laid down to die, and let go of everything in this world, hoping for dreams and morning. Maybe that's why my mother could never sleep - it's too much like death and she wasn't ready. So she was always walking, chasing awareness, clinging to life. Too afraid to let go, and then, years later, unable to do anything else.

Again and Again

Margo about Meena: P. 269 She always called me "Mrs. James". It was her way of reminding me of the permanence of my decisions, of reminding me she'd never change her name for a man. But my taking Humphrey's name had been very unconscious. Accidental, almost.

Tough Questions

Lenni and Father Arthur: p. 12 "...the Bible teaches us that Christ can guide you to the answer to every question."
"But can it answer an actually question? Honestly? Can you answer me a question without telling that life is a mystery, or that everything is God's plan, or that the answers I seek will come with time?"
"Why don't you tell me your question, and we will work together to see how God can help us find an answer?"
I leaned back into the pew and it creaked. The echo reverberated around the room.
"Why am I dying?"

A ha Moment

p. 64...we will have told our story, scratching out one hundred pictures intended to say, "Lenni and Margot were here."

Memory Moment
p. 42 Margot saying, "But you look so alive." [see contrasts and contradictions] triggers a memory moment for Lenni about getting in trouble at school for tearing the cover off of a book:
I think because I didn't look contrite enough, she sent me to the head teacher's office. It felt like I was being sent to the police. I was already sure that my parents would be told and that I would be in trouble forever. My palms started sweating. Even walking along the corridor to the teacher's office while everyone was in class felt wrong, like I was somewhere I ought not to be. 
There's a boy there who is also in trouble and he doesn't seem bothered at all. Suddenly, Lenni's memory moment stops:
p. 43: And that's exactly how I felt when Margot chose to break the silence by leaning toward me and whispering, "I'm dying too."
For a moment, I met Margot's bright blue eyes and I felt that we were perhaps going to be cellmates.

Notes/Quotes

p. 31 The hospital is a cruel mistress. The International Date Line run somewhere between the end of the May Ward and the nurses' station. The only way to fight Hospital Time is to never fight it. If New Nurse wanted to claim that she had been gone for only tow and a half hours, then I would let her. People start to worry if you fight Hospital Time. They ask you what year you think it is and if you remember the name of the prime minister.

p. 46 I promised Jackie I'd stop wandering around. Or wondering around. Nobody was specific about the spelling.

p. 50 Lenni: I have an urgency to have fun.

P. 132 ...they (the nurses) are the wardens and we are the prisoners, and if they get too close, the lines might become blurred as to who is captive and who is free.

p. 133 the octopus? time spent with the octopus? all the lines and poles?

p. 264 Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light. I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night. (old astronomer to his pupil, Sarah Williams)

p. 206 His shelves of books lined both sides of the living room. Most of them hadn't been touched since I first met him but they were all, as he insisted, essential. They'd been there so long that they seemed to be part of the walls rather than objects for use, like additional beams holding up the timber structure of his little cottage. With each book I took from the shelf, it felt like I was removing a brick from the walls of the house. Without him and his books, surely it would all fall down. 

p. 264 "Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light. I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night,"  I said.

p. 265

"Do you know," she said slowly, "that the stars that we see the dlearest are already dead?:
"Well, that's depressing." I took my hand from hers.
"No," she said gently, linking her arm through mine, "It's not depressing, it's beautiful. They've been gone for who knows how long, but we can still see them. They live on."
They live on.

Goodreads says:

An extraordinary friendship. A lifetime of stories.
Their last one begins here.

Life is short. No-one knows that better than seventeen year old Lenni living on the terminal ward. But as she is about to learn, it's not only what you make of life that matters, but who you share it with.

Dodging doctor's orders, she joins an art class where she bumps into fellow patient Margot, a rebel-hearted eighty three year old from the next ward. Their bond is instant as they realize that together they have lived an astonishing one hundred years.

To celebrate their shared century, they decide to paint their life stories: of growing old and staying young, of giving joy, of receiving kindness, of losing love, of finding the person who is everything.

As their extraordinary friendship deepens, it becomes vividly clear that life is not done with Lenni and Margot yet.

Fiercely alive, disarmingly funny and brimming with tenderness, THE ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF LENNI AND MARGOT unwraps the extraordinary gift of life even when it is about to be taken away, and revels in our infinite capacity for friendship and love when we need them most.

The Willpower Instinct (Kelly McGonigal)

 

I really like Kelly McGonigal's book, The Upside of Stress so I was happy to find this one. I listened to the audio book, which tends to make me not so good at taking notes. I was sorry the author didn't read the audio book. I liked her other book so much, to hear a male voice reading this one was a surprise. 

The author suggests ending rigid dieting. She says that the more you tell yourself to not eat something or not think about something, the more our brain seems to want to eat it or do it. She suggests surfing the urge, neither pushing it away or acting on it. When impulses and cravings come to mind, imagine it as a wave and breathe through those feelings. The inner acceptance seems to bring more control according to many studies. 

This book was pretty much in agreement with other books I have read on this topic like The Motivation Myth and Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. 

Goodreads says:

The first book to explain the new science of self-control and how it can be harnessed to improve our health, happiness, and productivity.

After years of watching her students struggling with their choices, health psychologist Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D., realized that much of what people believe about willpower is actually sabotaging their success. Committed to sharing what the scientific community already knew about self-control, McGonigal created a course called "The Science of Willpower" for Stanford University's Continuing Studies Program. The course was an instant hit and spawned the hugely successful Psychology Today blog with the same name.

Informed by the latest research and combining cutting-edge insights from psychology, economics, neuroscience, and medicine, McGonigal's book explains exactly what willpower is, how it works, and why it matters. Readers will learn:

Willpower is a mind-body response, not a virtue. It is a biological function that can be improved through mindfulness, exercise, nutrition, and sleep. People who have better control of their attention, emotions, and actions are healthier, happier, have more satisfying relationships, and make more money. Willpower is not an unlimited resource. Too much self-control can actually be bad for your health. Temptation and stress hijack the brain's systems of self-control, and that the brain can be trained for greater willpower.

In the groundbreaking tradition of Getting Things Done, The Willpower Instinct combines life-changing prescriptive advice and complementary exercises to help readers with goals ranging from a healthier life to more patient parenting, from greater productivity at work to finally finishing the basement.

The Power of Ritual (Casper Ter Kuile)

 

I really loved this author's take on religious and spiritual practices. For people struggling with their faith, this book might give them some ideas for how to continue a relationship with the divine rather than abandon everything.

He says: You already have a host of rituals we might call spiritual practices - even if you'd never use that language. Reading, walking, eating, resting, reflecting: these are legitimate and worthy of your attention and care, and they can be the foundation of a life of deep connection. He challenges us to take the power from and have permission to be creative in combining the ancient and the emergent. (p. 185)

Connecting With Self: The Art of Sacred Reading

p. 36 ...reading is not just something we can do to escape the world, but rather that it can help us live more deeply in it. 

p. 37 ...they help us know who we are and decide who we might want to become. 

p. 51 Saint Anselm had advised his wealthy patron, Countess Matilda of Tuscany, that if she read a sacred text her goal was not to finish reading it, but instead to read only as much as would stir her mind to prayer. ...Monastic communities didn't read a book only once-there were far too few precious volumes for that anyway! Rereading, and reading out loud, were how monks studied a text, leading them up the ladder...reading, meditating, praying, and contemplating. 

1. What's literally happening in the narrative? Where are we in the story?
2. What allegorical images, stories, songs or metaphors show up for you?
3. What experiences have you had in your own life that come to mind?
4. What action are you being called to take?

Connecting With Self: Sabbath Time
p. 78 Ultimately, a sabbath of some form or another is necessary for connecting with ourselves...Sabbath gives us perspective. It reconnects us with our imagination. We can envision new ways in which the world might work. "Sabbath is not simply the pause that refresher. It is the pause that transforms." (Walter Brueggemann)

- Tech Sabbath (total break from technology
- Sabbath From Others (alone time)
- Sabbath From Work To Make Room For Play

Connecting With Others

p. 82 The people who were most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80...on the days when they had more physical pain, older people in satisfying relationships were just as happy as they were on the days when they felt fine. But for the elder participants who had unsatisfying relationships, their physical pain was magnified by emotional pain. 

Connecting With Nature

- walking
- pilgrimages
- permission to be creative
- celebrate the seasons

p. 123 This practice of circumambulation is a key spiritual tool to transform any journey into a pilgrimage. By making repeated circles around our destination, we created a sacred center. Our journey itself honors what we leave in the middle. (examples: Kaaba...the holy mosque in Mecca which pilgrims walk seven times at the end of the hajj). Circumambulation allows us to see every angle of our destination or the object of our veneration

Connecting with Transcendence

Types of prayer

p. 156 adoration - the first step to deeper awareness is about getting radically away from ourselves, to decenter our individual experience and seek to place ourselves in service of, or to become part of, something bigger than us.

p. 161 contrition - What have I done that has caused pain or suffering? What have I left undone that might have served others? For what do I need forgiveness?
p. 164 explore how you might incorporate physical movement. My experience has been that on the days where there is simply too much to say, sitting on my knees and bowing forward, placing my head on the floor, offers its own prayer of contrition. 

p. 168 thanksgiving
p. 170 Giving thanks to that source of goodness outside ourselves-whether a specific person, the luck of a certain opportunity, or something more deeply spiritual - contributes to reorienting our lives away from the dominant cultural narrative of our own successes, desires, and ambitions and toward a perspective that is more holistic.
p. 172 Imagine you only have a year left to live. What might you do with the time you have left? Spend some time thinking or journaling. Visualize where you might go, who you'd want to talk to. What you'd stop doing. Now imagine you only have a week. How might you choose to spend your last days? What would your last meal be? Who would you walk with? Now imagine it is your last hour live. And then your last minute. Your last breath. This very breath you're breathing right now.
p. 173 You might download an app like WeCroak, which pings you five times a day to remind you of your coming death. Or you can find a short phrase to say out loud as you put on moisturizer or make up in the morning, or every time you get in the car. The secret is to repeat it often, so that you experience a regular moment of reflection and gratitude for being alive.

p. 173 supplication - mindfully hold someone or something in the presence of the divine...it's a chance to hold people we love in our compassionate awareness.
p. 174 Jack Kornfield's Buddhist metta (loving-kindness) meditation practice where we repeat three intentions over and over again. We start with ourselves, then turn to someone we love, then to a stranger, and then to someone with whom we are struggling? 

Name: 
    May you safe and free from suffering
    May you be happy and healthy as possible
    May you have ease of being
p. 175 Supplication can look like intentional well-wishing, but it can also simply be the process by which we lift up the things in life we need help with. We call into our conscious mind the fears we might have, for example. Sometimes I create a list in my journal, trying to fill the whole page to ensure I am digging deep enough to clear out all the gunk in my mind. ....Writing it down or saying it out loud seems to take the sting out of things that are haunting me. This is the power of supplicatory prayer. It creates a place for fear and simultaneously puts fear in its place. It allows us to say what scares us without allowing it to overwhelm us. ...I speak the fears aloud in the shower, the fears mingling with the steam and just floating around the bathroom.
p. 176 Zen Buddhist teacher and writer Cheri Huber takes this practice on step further. She explains that you can use your phone to record yourself speaking aloud all your fears, pains, and angers-describing all the frustrations you feel in great detail. Then, after taking a short break, listen to the recording as if hearing someone else's problems, and bring to them the kind of compassion and love that you would to a friend or a stranger. After listening through loving ears, record a loving message back to yourself with some words of wisdom and care. Then after another break, listen to that second message.

Blessings
This is actually part of the supplication prayer section but it was so profound I need to stand alone for when I review. He says:
p. 178 O'Donohue (John O'Donohue To Bless the Space Between Us) describes blessings as "a circle of light drawn around a person to protect, heal, and strengthen." In this, he drew on ancient Celtic spiritual practice. The Celts drew a caim - a circle - around themselves in times of danger. Whether or not they believed in magical powers, it reminded them that they were always surrounded by the divine, that the mystery of the holy encircles us and entwines through us wherever we are. Blessings exist to remind us of that fact. If we're gone of our tune, a blessing or prayer of supplication bring us back into harmony. That's why, for O'Donohue, a blessing has real power. We must offer it with conviction because "the beauty of blessing is its belief that it can affect what unfolds."

A Rule of Life p. 187

He also devoted a whole section to the importance of tracking our intentions...which is totally my jam! He even refers to Gretchen Rubin's tracking sheets :) 

Two books he suggests on this. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the at my library nor on Amazon!
Note To Self: Creating Your Guide to a More Spiritual Life (Charles LaFond)
Living Intentionally: A Workbook for Creating a Personal Rule of Life (Brother David Vryhof)

p. 193 The Dali Lama famously explains that although he usually meditates for an hour a day, on a particularly busy day he makes sure to meditate for two.

Goodreads says:

Ter Kuile, cohost of the podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, demonstrates in his thoughtful debut how the nonreligious can "liberate the gifts of tradition" to foster greater spiritual connection in their lives. He argues that, while formal religious affiliation may be waning, spiritual practices remain relevant because they can cultivate bonds to the self, others, the natural world, and the transcendent. Ter Kuile explains the significance of a variety of religious practices, including pilgrimage, prayer, and meditation, and proposes ways to capture their significance through everyday activities ("anything can become a spiritual practice--gardening, painting, singing, snuggling, sitting") by focusing on intention, attention, and repetition. This approach leads to inventive explorations of social trends; for instance, the famously cultish appeal of the Crossfit fitness program is explained in terms of vulnerability and community. In ter Kuile's understanding, religious traditions are "inherently creative" and therefore good starting points for considering personalized, meaningful spiritual practices.

Now You Say Yes (Bill Harley)

 

I need to do a better job of writing down who recommended a book to me and/or why. I wish I knew why I ended up with this book. I'm glad I did though! It might have been because of the eclipse aspect of it. It might have been because of the autistic character. All I know is it was a really great read. Mari's ability to learn to work with her brother Connor to get him to cooperate with her plan was smart. Mari's perseverance and wisdom in figuring out what to do now that they're alone was also inspiring. Her thoughts about what people think of her and her brother were well written. It is a read well worth the time.

The title comes from something that Connor would often say when badgering someone about something he wanted or something he wanted to do, "Now you say yes!"

I thought it was a pretty realistic portrayal of an autistic person, although, the comments from people about him being weird or a freak made me wince. Then again, people do say those things. I appreciated the growing love Mari had for her brother and how she took care of him.

Goodreads says:

A middle grade novel about two orphaned siblings (my interjection: They're not really orphans....they do have a dad - but he left) on a cross-country journey in search of their place in the world.

When her adoptive mother dies, fifteen-year-old Mari and is desperate to avoid being caught up in the foster system. Again. And to complicate matters, she is now the only one who can take care of her super-smart and on-the-spectrum nine-year-old stepbrother, Conor.

Is there anyone Mari can trust to help them? Certainly not her mother’s current boyfriend, Dennis. Not the doctors or her teachers, who would be obliged to call in social services. So in a desperate move, Mari takes Conor and sets out to find their estranged grandmother, hoping to throw themselves at the mercy of the only person who might take them in.

On their way to New England, the duo experiences the snarls of LA traffic, the backroads of the Midwest, and a monumental stop in Missouri where they witness the solar eclipse, an event with which Conor is obsessed. Mari also learns about the inner workings of her stepbrother’s mind and about her connections to him and to the world…and maybe even a little about her own place in it.