Zorrie

 I chose to read Zorrie by Laird Hunt because I saw it was a finalist for the national book award for fiction. The story is about a woman named Zorrie who is trying to find a sense of belonging. She is orphaned as a young child during the great depression and raised by an unfamiliar aunt who seems to be cold and heartless. When her aunt dies, Zorrie is homeless and a teenager. She travels on foot and eventually finds a job painting numbers on a clock face with radium paint. She makes friends with some of the other girls at the plant. The workers at the plant are told to use their mouths to make the tip of the paint brush come to a sharp point. Eventually they notice that their mouths are glowing in the dark. The factory owners tell the employees that radium is not only healthy to ingest but adds to your beauty. Later her friends come down with bone cancer and Zorrie worries that eating radium wasn't a good choice. Zorrie eventually finds a community. She settles down in Indiana on a farm where she raises animals and vegetables and oats and corn. Rural life suits her. As she cooks a ham dinner with peach pie for a neighbor who needs emotional support, Zorrie comes to realize that this is where she belongs. This book proves once again that ordinary people can be extraordinary.