The Conditions of Love - Dale M Kushner

 Eunice is around ten years old at the start of this book, and it will take you through  to her adolescence and the rest of her teen years.  She's in love with her father, a man who turns up just once since he left home when she was a baby, and oh! how lovely and how handsome he is.  Her mother, on the other hand, yearns for Hollywood - the stars, the famous, the entire lifestyle.  The first third of the book describes this time in Eunice's life and the people she meets beautifully (as does the rest of it), and we get to understand how a fatherless child might feel.  During a flood in her home area she is lost, and would have died if she was not found by a woods-woman, Rose, who keeps bees and lives in her own home-built cabin.  This third of the book is entirely different, except that Eunice is continuing to tell you her story.  I loved Rose, a woman who had lost everything but made a life anyway.  And finally, the last third tells if the meeting of Eunice's love of her life and the early days of that relationship.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   And if you think I have told all - you'd be wrong, for this book is full of things!  Also, for me, an absolute joy to read, honestly.  A lovely writing style (and this is Kushner's first novel) and a tale to be read in huge chunks if you can - I cannot recommend this one enough.  Go.  Find.  Read!

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P.S. ...... the cover picture is wrong - the bird in question was a turquoise parakeet, not a blue budgerigar........ but that's all I could find wrong with this lovely book.