Flapjack Waltzes Author:Nancy Wilson A grieving twelve-year-old girl decides to live again. Two years earlier, Natalie Larrabee's teenaged brother was killed in a freak car accident. The brother of her best friend, Zheng, was also in the car but lived. Zheng still has all her siblings, and Natalie has none. Unable to continue her friendship with Zheng and uncomfortable with the ... more »other kids at school, Natalie longs for companionship. Then the empty house in the neighborhood is sold, and Natalie prays that a girl her age will move in. But the new owner is a retired professor - and childless. Reluctantly at first, Natalie is drawn into the life of Professor Herta Ehrlich. The elderly woman's house becomes her safe haven, a place where Natalie can forget that her own house is practically a morgue, that her parents barely function as parents - that her family has fallen apart. It's also where Natalie determines to confront her parents and restore her friendship with Zheng. Intermingling vivid scenes from the past with the present, this is a poignant and inspiriting story about death and renewal in springtime.« less