A review by cornmaven
Three Pennies by Melanie Crowder

5.0

A beautifully written, compassionate story of the inner life of a foster care child who longs to be reunited with her birth mother. It's also a story about bending the rules when the rules won't lead to the correct conclusion, about facing facts even when facts are not great, about forging a new path with a stranger.

The owl in the story is the all seeing observer, watching carefully over Marin as she tries her best to find her mother. Crowder does a wonderful job of giving life to Marin's character and a good supporting cast of adults who tread carefully with her because of what they know or how new they are to the role of parenting. Bad foster homes figure in the mix, as well as an adult who believes Marin needs to know the truth.

I only quibble with one detail: Marin would never have been able to access a Social Security database to try to find her mother, nor census records, given that the latest census open to the public is 1940. Some editor should have caught that.

Other than that, it is a story touched my heart.