Where the Forest Meets the Stars by Glendy Vanderah

She worked her way into my heart immediately. The little girl, who goes by more than one name, is precocious, whip-smart, and painfully vulnerable. Right away, we see that Jo and the little girl need each other very much, yet so much is unknown about the girl’s history that we can’t be certain if she and Jo should continue on the path they’re taking.

The first few chapters of this book were the most intriguing I’ve read in a long time. When a barefoot child starts hanging around Jo’s cabin, Jo enlists the help of her reclusive neighbor. After her mother passes away, Jo regroups and returns to rural Illinois to pick up where she left off on her research. The story’s protagonist, Joanna “Jo” Teale, is a down-to-earth graduate student studying birds and an unflappable cancer survivor.

In Where The Forest Meets The Stars, author Glendy Vanderah presents characters to readers as clearly as if we were meeting each other in person. For example, when a fallen branch hits Ursa in the head, knocking her unconscious, she claims responsibility, explaining it enabled a good thing to happen, which she clarifies is “ staying overnight again” (136).I discovered Where The Forest Meets The Stars late in 2020, and as the December weeks ticked away with our fun holiday-themed stories, I could hardly keep from pushing this book to the front of the line and sharing it with you right away. This theme is evident in several additional events involving Ursa’s quarks. Ursa’s ability to make good things happen sometimes comes at the cost of bad things happening. Ursa clarifies that she “didn’t want that but sometimes bad things happen to make good things happen” (95).

When Ursa declares, “I made it happen” (95), she invites skepticism from Tabby, who asks if Ursa also “made Nancy get in a car wreck” (95). The owner puts the house up for lease because she must leave the state to care for her former partner after a severe car accident. In the first instance of Ursa claiming responsibility for a good thing happening, Jo and Tabby sign the lease for their dream house. Her quarks are a motif that helps develop the theme Taking the Good with the Bad. She says her quarks “can change people’s fates” and “make good stuff happen around us when we meet earthlings we like” (137). Ursa’s quarks are a form of magic she claims is one of her special alien abilities.

Where the Forest Meets the Stars by Glendy Vanderah