Lovey Mary

In the crowded, uncoddling halls of the orphanage, eight-year-old Lovey Mary burns with a fierce, unmanageable want: she wants to be loved, and she wants to be beautiful, and she cannot understand why the world seems determined to deny her both. Rebellious and tender in equal measure, she rebels against the drab uniformity of her existence while nurturing a fierce protectiveness toward the baby Tommy, whose care is thrust upon her and who becomes the one creature in this cold world that needs her. Rice renders the Cabbage Patch orphanage with a humor that never curdles into cruelty, finding comedy in Mary's chaotic negotiations with the matron Miss Bell and in the small indignities of institutional life, yet never losing sight of the genuine ache at a child s heart: the desperate hope that she might matter to someone, anyone. This is a story about the stubbornness of love in a child who has every reason to feel unlovable, and the way even small acts of care can become acts of defiance against a world that has already decided your worth.