I met Beverly Tapinsky in Raymie Nightingale, the first book of the “Los Rancheros” series that also includes Louisiana’s Way Home and Beverly, Right Here. In Raymie Nightingale the three girls meet each other while taking their first baton lesson from an alcoholic woman living in the past. Raymie is taking lessons so that she can win a talent contest and get her picture in the paper to get the attention of her dentist father who has just run away with his dental hygienist. Louisiana is taking lessons so she can win the prize money and be able to buy food. Beverly Tapinsky’s reason for the baton twirling lessons is much darker. She wants to be in the talent contest so she can sabotage it. Each girl has a reason to be angry, but Beverly is the angriest.
Beverly, Right Here begins soon after Beverly’s one-eyed dog, Buddy, dies. She loved this dog deeply. Buddy’s death is her emotional last straw. Beverly’s father walked away from the family when she was little. Her mother is an alcoholic and emotionally abusive. The death of Buddy pushes her over the edge, and she runs away from home. As she puts it, “I’m not running away, just leaving.” She’s fifteen years old, confused, and angry.
Beverly doesn’t like people. She doesn’t trust them. The two people who should love her most—her father and mother—have abandoned her physically and abused her emotionally. Then, the one who did love her—her dog Buddy—leaves her by dying. Additionally, one of her two friends, Louisiana, just up and disappeared one night (read my review of Louisiana’s Way Home). What is she supposed to make of a world like this?
After leaving home and making her way to a nearby city on the coast, Beverly has no plans and nowhere to go. Fortunately, she has author Kate DiCamillo looking out for her because the world is harsh and no place for a lone 15-year-old girl to be living on the streets. Beverly happens to walk past a trailer park where a lonely old lady is out watering her flowers. “Haddy!” says the old woman in her north Floridian accent. Presumably she means “Howdy.” Beverly is not impressed. The first thing that comes to her mind is a poem, “. . . in a crooked little house by a crooked little sea.” It turns out that that owner of the crooked little house is lonely and in need of someone to drive her to her Thursday night bingo matches at the local VFW. Beverly doesn’t have a driver’s license, but she can drive. She’s not great company, but she suits Iola just fine. For her services Beverly gets room (a bed on a screened porch) and board (tuna melts).
Soon, other odd ball characters step into her life. There’s lonely Mr. Denby, the owner of Mr. Seas, a seafood restaurant that serves only lunch. He’s separated from his wife and three daughters but works hard to support them. In Beverly he sees his daughters. He hires Beverly to bus tables. In spite of paying her under the table, he’s a good man. There’s Freddie, a waitress for Mr. Denby. She has big dreams that she will never reach. Freddie has a loser of a boyfriend, Jerome, who tries to rob the restaurant with a wiffle bat. Then there is Elmer, an intelligent but jaded boy with severe acne and a beautiful heart.
It doesn’t take long for these oddball but beautiful people to help Beverly understand that hope grows alongside despair. This happens in subtle ways. For instance, this encounter with the grey-haired cook at Mr. Seas. After giving Beverly some very good advice, Doris says, “You have to watch out for yourself, because no one else will.”
“But aren’t you watching out for me right now?” Beverly answers.
Indeed, Doris is looking out for Beverly just like these other strangers whose lives have suddenly merged with hers. By the end of the book Beverly isn’t focusing on the tragedy of what’s not in her life, but on the joy of what is there.
In each book of the “Los Rancheros” series, the protagonist (Raymie, then Louisiana, then Beverly) is two years older. Beverly, being the oldest at the time of her book, has the darkest anger of the three. DiCamillo deals with this anger by throwing in other people who are struggling through their own difficult lives, but doing so with compassion and the faith that what’s good in the world is just as real and even more important than what is not. Beverly’s life is still complicated at the end of the book, but her ability to see and accept the good in the people around her gives us hope that she is going to be able to build a full life.
These books by Tory Anderson are now available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback format:
