But the smell of Matt is starting to fade from his blue shirt, which Alice wears every day, and the phone calls are never long enough.Īlice Bliss is a profoundly moving coming-of-age novel about love and its many variations-the support of a small town looking after its own love between an absent father and his daughter the complicated love between an adolescent girl and her mother and an exploration of new love with the boy next door. Alice will learn to drive, join the track team, go to her first dance, and fall in love, all while trying to be strong for her mother, Angie, and take care of her precocious little sister, Ellie. Matt will miss seeing his daughter blossom from a tomboy into a full-blown teenager. When he ships out, Alice is faced with finding a way to fill the emptiness he has left behind. Alice idolizes her father, loves working beside him in their garden, accompanying him on the occasional roofing job, playing baseball. When Alice Bliss learns that her father, Matt, is being deployed to Iraq, she's heartbroken. Just looks at him as he watches the fire with muffin crumbs on his lap. She can't imagine doing anything without her dad and she starts to feel like she can't breathe. It's his thing she's always thought of herself as his assistant at best. She can't imagine doing the garden without her dad. Outside the back window Alice can see the outlines of the garden, some of the furrows visible under the snow, stretching away in long thin rows.

Alice bliss by laura harrington