Louisiana Elefante, the tiny girl with the great big name, first showed up as one of three friends — the Three Rancheros — in Minnesota writer Kate DiCamillo's "Raymie Nightingale," a finalist for a 2016 National Book Award.
Louisiana had "swampy lungs" and pinned her blond hair back with rabbit barrettes. Her trapeze-artist parents (the Flying Elefantes) were dead, and she lived a destitute existence in a small Florida town with her peculiar grandmother.
We learn just how peculiar Granny was in "Louisiana's Way Home," DiCamillo's new novel for middle-grade readers, and her first sequel.
The story is told in Louisiana's distinctive and utterly believable voice. A great deal of the story, she warns us right away, "is extremely sad."
In the dead black of 3 a.m., Granny shakes Louisiana awake. "The day of reckoning has arrived!" Granny says, and the two climb into the car and head off. Granny has done this before, so Louisiana simply goes back to sleep. But this time is different; when she awakens, they are somewhere in Georgia, and they're not going back.
The story that unfolds from there is, indeed, extremely sad, a tale of leaving cherished things behind and moving on.
Louisiana, Granny tells her, carries the "curse of sundering," and it is true that with this trip she has now been torn asunder from all that she loves — the state of Florida, the two other Rancheros, her dog and her cat — and she is beyond bereft.
"I have been made to leave home against my will," she tells a man who gives them a ride when they run out of gas.
