Though there are other teenage characters, the majority of Iris' time is spent with Dr. With a soft sense of humor and a few unexpected reactions to situations, Iris keeps the reader interested simply by what she's enduring. She is a character who is easy to understand and empathize with, and she is also intelligent and sharp witted. Stuber handles her emotions and reactions with an expert hand, using care but still pushing Iris through the needed events. Now at fifteen, she's aware that her relationship with her father is less than ideal.

Iris has had an unusual upbringing, particularly for the time, as she lost her mother at an early age. Incorporating letters to further tell the story adds a welcomed element as well and shows more insight into the characters. Iris is a strong character undergoing many changes and Stuber plays them out both age and time appropriately. Lyrical, yet humorous, Barbara Stuber’s debut novel is the unforgettable story of a girl who struggles to cast aside her long-standing grief and doubt and, in the span of one dusty summer, learn to trust, hope, and-ultimately-love.Ĭrossing the Tracks is a beautiful coming of story set in the 1920s but written in a way that will resonate with readers today. Iris must find the guts and cunning to take aim at the devil incarnate and discover if she is really as helpless-or as hopeless-as she once believed. Iris is buoyed by the warmth and understanding the doctor and his mother show her, but just as she starts to break out of her shell, tragedy strikes. Suddenly Iris is alone, stuck in gritty rural Missouri, too far from her only friend Leroy and too close to a tenant farmer, Cecil Deets, who menaces the neighbors and, Iris suspects, his own daughter. Unbeknownst to her, he hires Iris out as housekeeper and companion for a country doctor’s elderly mother. After her mother’s early death, Iris’s father focuses on big plans for his new shoe stores and his latest girlfriend, and has no time for his daughter. At fifteen, Iris is a hobo of sorts - no home, no family, no direction.

Crossing the Tracks by Barbara Stuber