Getting To Normal

Step inside the heart and mind of a troubled child as she struggles to belong.

In a tiny hospital room, seven-year-old Alice suffers from mysterious headaches and acute withdrawal. The doctors suspect a virus of the central nervous system. To complicate matters, during her illness and subsequent recovery at home, Alice is locked in a struggle to connect to her “nervous” mother, her often-absent father, and her sister, Sarah, a moody and rebellious teenager.

When Alice’s mother flees to New York to escape the stress of home life, Irma, a refugee from Sarajevo, is hired to care for Alice. The vivacious Irma encourages Alice’s natural curiosity and capacity for laughter and imagination, and the young girl begins to blossom, until appearance-obsessed Sarah warns, “It’s not normal that you like your babysitter so much you never even think about your mother.”

In this deeply moving novel, we see the world through Alice’s unique perspective, her voice captured with beautiful and stirring authenticity. As she plunges into a painful crisis of loyalty, belonging, and loss, Alice engages our hearts in an exploration of what we need to stay fully alive.