Eleanor “Groovy” Robinson has had a fairly charmed life. She has a loving mother and father, friends, lives in southern California near the beach. She knows what she wants out of life: to go to cooking school. Everything is perfect, until the summer she turns eleven and her father is taken off to jail. Suddenly, her perfect world is turned upside down. Her mother, who knows something about the arrest, won’t talk. Groovy finds out that the “inheritance” — the money left her by her grandmother — she was going to use for cooking school is gone. She resorts to selling chocolate-covered strawberries at a local taco shop, which isn’t nearly as grand or as satisfying. She has bottled-up anger, frustration, and mistrust for both of her parents. Thankfully, she also has friends and others in the town who are willing to help guide her through this turbulent time.

This sweet, touching story follows Groovy as she learns of loss, betrayal, love, and forgiveness and what is needed to bring a broken family back together again, even if it’s not completely whole.

Rated: None