4. Once Upon a Day - Lisa Tucker

audio read by Joyce Bean (beautifully!)

10 unabridged cds, 11 hours

2006, Brilliance Audio

368 pgs.

Adult contemporary realistic fiction

Finished Sunday, Jan. 13, 2013

Goodreads Rating: 3.62

My Rating 4/Liked it a lot

Acquired: PBS

Setting: Contemporary St. Louis, rural New Mexico, and LA (with 1980's Hollywood flashbacks)

My comments: Once I started listening to this book, I couldn't stop. I usually don't like a story that switches from one character to another, but Tucker has done it very effectively here. Joyce Bean reads it with sensitivity and nails the 23-year old's voice perfectly...perhaps her reading enhanced the entire book for me? I liked it a lot.

Goodreads Review  Nineteen years ago, a famous filmmaker disappeared from Los Angeles, taking his two children, Dorothea and Jimmy, to a desolate corner of New Mexico. There he raised them in complete isolation without television, computer, radio -- not even a newspaper. Now, at twenty-three, Dorothea leaves in search of her missing brother -- and ventures into the outside world for the first time. Her search becomes an odyssey of discovery when Dorothea meets Stephen Spaulding, a cab driver dealing with his own mysterious history. With him as her guide, Dorothea uncovers the truth of her family's past and the terrifying day that changed her father forever. Together, they have a chance to discover that although a heart can be broken by the tragic events of a day, a day can also bring a new chance at love and a deeper understanding of life's infinite possibilities