A Piece of the World

Christina Olson has spent her entire life in the house she was born. The house that has been in her mother’s family for hundreds of years. It is on the sea in Cushing, Maine, in a small town where most people farm or fish and everyone knows everyone. Christina attends the one room schoolhouse with her brothers until she is 12. Due to a childhood illness she struggles physically with everyday tasks and chores but her determined nature pushes her forward. Christina doesn’t understand, until it is too late, that she most likely will never leave this house, this town, this simple but hard life. Although she learns very young about heartache and loss, she also sees poetry in the beauty of the land, the ocean and the stars - always wondering if she was meant to adventure the world as her Mamey did married to Captain Sam so many years ago. Later, when it is just her brother Alvaro and herself left on the farm there is an unexpected knock at the door. From that day forward the renowned American artist Andrew Wyeth uses their home, their land and their images to create a body of work that will live on forever. Their unique friendship, understanding and perspective creates an unlikely bond amongst these very private people and the infamous Christina’s World which I see in a whole new light. This magnificent novel by bestselling author Christina Baker Kline (The Orphan Train) is a quiet stream of words, filling pages, telling a story that pours straight into the reader’s heart. I could not put it down. I cannot stop thinking about Christina.