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The Heart is Not a Size by Beth Kephart is a lovely book.  Georgia has been best friends with Riley for forever.  They had been the queens of finger paints and mud pancakes.  Now teens and ten years into their friendship, at a time when they are both redefining themselves, both travel together from their suburban Pennsylvanian home to Juarez, Mexico, a border city with El Paso.  There they hope to not only change their own lives but make a difference for the families there through community service.

Georgia has always been the reliable one.  The one who will always do the right thing.  The one who recognizes and appreciates just how much her parents love her.  On the other hand, Riley just can’t seem to catch the attention of her distracted mother.  A mother who laments that Riley is just “ordinary” or in other words, nobody special.  Riley is brilliantly artistic but it’s not enough.  A mother’s love.  That’s what she so desperately seeks and in chasing it will almost lose herself.

Georgia hopes that the Juarez trip will make a difference.  But how long can she ignore Riley’s secrets?  How long can she not speak up?  Instead of bringing the two of them closer together, their summer together may tear them apart instead.

I have to admit that the beauty of Beth Kephart’s writing was so beautiful and poignant that I found it almost distracting to the story.  I kept stopping and reading paragraphs again or deconstructing sentences.  I feel as though I could open any page and find a gorgeously written passage.

Later that night I woke up sweating from a dream, those black wings inside my rib cage beating, my mother’s words – Apply your intelligence to every living thing – snaking through my blood.  Because again my heart knew what my mind had avoided:  Juarez was probably a hare-brained scheme; what were the chances – really – that I’d fly all the way there and come home stronger?  I fought with the dark to free myself from my bed, struggled to wrest the weight from my chest.  It was after two, and the house was quiet, and I headed for the stairs, my right fist against my heart to quiet the fury, to survive it.  I needed the night beyond, which finally I reached, stumbling out onto the porch and into the streets and heading for the fairgrounds, which were empty now, the horses long since talked back into their trailers and driving off, Riley’s stories floating somewhere in the caverns of their heads.  I hadn’t had a panic attack in two months.  Each one was bigger than the last.

We find out the heart only by dismantling what the heart knows.

The words are from a poem Jack Gilbert wrote and Mr. Buzzy read toward the end of my sophomore year, when I finally stopped minding the class so much and settles in to learn.  I walked the streets that night with that line in my head – walked until I could breathe again and stand up straight without collapsing.  I was going to Juarez because I needed some perspective, some place where I could let the big bird free.  My head knew things that my heart didn’t yet.  I was privileged.  I was smart.  I had a future.  It was time to believe in myself.

I LOVED the creativity of the characters. Riley through her art endeavors, painting, jewelry making. Georgia through the lens of the camera. I was able to identify with the need for Georgia to take photographs. While I sometimes had a difficult time remembering the side characters, I felt that I got an immediate sense of both Riley and Georgia and through their parents, a solid background of how they were both approaching their upcoming Juarez trip. The sense of place was also very strong. And one can’t help but love the children of Juarez after Kephart’s lovely descriptions.

This is a book that I could tell the author poured her soul into. One that was crafted with love and care. And from the end result – a poetic, layered, and thoughtful story that doesn’t back off from issues affecting teens – it shows.

Links of interest: Beth Kephart blog, The Heart is Not a Size resource blog, more book blogger reviews.
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
Publisher: Harper Teen.  March 30, 2010
Hardcover, 256 pages. ISBN 0061470481
Source copy: Review copy
The Heart is Not a Size is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

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