Face the Music

Grade 8-12 Eighteen-year-old Marcie, who has finished her first year of college, would like to take a year off to play music and to decide what to do with her life. She travels to Austin with her sister's friend, Kate, to participate in her sister's wedding and decides to stay for a while to take bluegrass lessons. In making this decision, Marcie must come to terms with her musical talent, new and difficult friendships and a confrontation with her clinging, manipulative mother. While the relationships, particularly among Marcie, her mother and her grandmother, are believably portrayed, the issue of Marcie's independence is swamped by other problems such as Kate's diabetes, a mentally ill young man, two parental divorces, Marcie's all-too-rapid acquisition of bluegrass skill and a hurricane. Newton's I Will Call It Georgie's Blues (Viking, 1983) and Paterson's Come Sing, Jimmy Jo (Lodestar, 1985) do a better job of portraying the discipline and the release of music against a background of family troubles. Barbara Chatton, College of Education, University of Wyoming, Laramie
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