Two years ago, Maine children’s book author and illustrator Charlotte Agell published “Maybe Tomorrow?”, a picture book that gently and movingly addresses the grieving process. It is a must read for any young child dealing with loss. In “Wishing Season,” Anica Mrose Rissi, who grew up on Deer Isle, does something similar for slightly older, more sophisticated readers. The result is equally compelling as we watch a fifth-grade girl navigate the banks of pain and loss, at first desperately and then gradually to the point of healing.

Four months ago, eleven-year-old Lily lost her twin brother Anders to a short, terrible illness. Now, as school ends and summer begins, she and her mother are still reeling from his death. Her mother barely gets out of bed and Lily sleepwalks through life, numb and angry. The only thing keeping her grounded (if that’s the right word) are her daily encounters with Anders, which take place on the swing set behind the barn. This place, which they call Overlap, is the small (and getting smaller) space where her world and his world meet.

Is Anders really there? Or has Lily simply conjured him up as a way to deal with the intense pain of missing him? Rissi never really says it, and it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the way that Anders’ presence allows Lily the gift of time, which she did not have during her illness, to work on saying goodbye to him, to remember all the things she loved about him, to savor the extraordinary tension of her twin. bond and process your pain. (In a wonderfully subtle twist, Rissi also uses their time together to show us how the dying process works: as Overlap shrinks, we see Anders gradually separating himself from the real world.)

No one but Anders can do this for Lily. Her mother (a single mother) is emotionally unavailable, her best friend has proven to be worse than useless, and she feels like a “radioactive bug” at school. One of the things Rissi captures perfectly is this sense of alienation that is unique to grieving children: adults can usually count on other adults for empathy; Fifth graders (understandably) have no idea how to treat each other.

It also makes clear why this loss for Lily is so serious: the bond between twins is stronger than any other, perhaps even the bond between mother and child: “Lily wasn’t Lily without him.” It’s more than just sharing “Things about us” without words: loving the smell of books, needing Fluffernutter sandwiches to be cut into diamond shapes, laughing at the word plumber. In reality, they are part of each other: “She missed him the same way she would miss her own arm.”

If all this sounds daunting, it is not, for two reasons. First, Rissi balances all the sadness with humor. His characters, especially the children, love word games and have a wicked sense of humor. His jokes are always funny and fun for any age.

The other source of delight is the way the beauty of Maine’s natural world permeates the entire book. Rissi dedicated this book to Deer Isle and his love for the place and its people shines through in virtually every paragraph. She fills the story with wonderful supporting characters and never misses an opportunity to glory in the scenery, the changing seasons, and the rugged beauty. She conveys all of this, not in long lyrical passages (which any young reader would skip) but in the daily lives of the characters who spend their time picking wild berries, making jokes about the smell of clams under the Deer Isle bridge, or popping fronds of algae along the shore. “(T)he salt, pine, and granite air,” Lily knows, “was as much a part of her as her kidneys.”

Rissi’s only misstep comes in some passages where he attempts to imbue some of the wildlife with human attributes, such as speech, or shift the point of view to, say, a bird or a fox. Perhaps he wanted to add a level of fantasy to the story, but the effect is jarring.

Lily spends most of the book desperately trying to keep Anders from leaving her a second time as Overlap shrinks. But gradually, and with his support, she finds new friends, helps her mother out of her cocoon of sadness, and is finally able (in a truly touching scene) to genuinely mourn him. The story moves quickly, with short chapters, crisp, colorful prose, and fast-paced, believable dialogue. Rissi’s book is at once profound, witty, heartbreaking and moving. There is something in “Wishing Season” for every reader, not just those who are grieving.

Amy MacDonald is a children’s author based in Portland and Vinalhaven. You can contact her at [email protected].

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