I missed the Canby Hall series the first time around. Good thing I have Celia to catch me up thirty years later. Three girls from disparate backgrounds meet at a Massachusetts boarding school. Dana is a wealthy white Manhattanite with divorced parents; Faith is Black and from DC where her father was killed in the line of police duty; Shelley lives with both her parents and her brother in Iowa, and she's head-over-heels for her boyfriend. The girls don't get off to a good start, but with the help of their cool housemother become BFFs.
We meet Dana first, and her mother Carol (who shares a name with the ghost writer of this first Canby book). I'm closer to Carol's age than Dana's, so I might have related to her anyway, but this really spoke to me.
"I could tell you were up already," Dana said.
"Only sort of. I was drifting. But I value my drift time almost as much as my sleep time." Her mother yawned widely.
Exactly! Drift time! I don't get nearly enough drift time.
I expected the story and language to be more hokey and dated than they are. Other than the overuse of the word "terrific," the book feels close to vernacular.
I liked it well enough, but will I ask the Columbia University Libraries to borrow the rest in the series, at something like $15 a loan?