The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker

When Truly Plaice's mother was pregnant, the town of Aberdeen joined together in betting how recordbreakingly huge the baby boy would ultimately be. The girl who proved to be Truly paid the price of her enormity; her father blamed her for her mother's death in childbirth, and was totally ill equipped to raise either this giant child or her polar opposite sister Serena Jane, the epitome of femine perfection. When he, too, relinquished his increasingly tenuous grip on life, Truly and Serena Jane are separated--Serena Jane to live a life of privilege as the future May Queen and Truly to live on the outskirts of town on the farm of the town sadsack, the subject of constant abuse and humiliation at the hands of her peers.

Serena Jane's beauty proves to be her greatest blessing and her biggest curse, for it makes her the obsession of classmate Bob Bob Morgan, the youngest in a line of Robert Morgans who have been doctors in Aberdeen for generations. Though they have long been the pillars of the community, the earliest Robert Morgan married the town witch, Tabitha Dyerson, and the location of her fabled shadow book--containing mysterious secrets for healing and darker powers--has been the subject of town gossip ever since. Bob Bob Morgan, one of Truly's biggest tormentors, does the unthinkable to claim the prize of Serena Jane, and changes the destiny of all Aberdeen from there on.

When Serena Jane flees town and a loveless marriage to Bob Bob, it is Truly who must become the woman of a house that she did not choose and mother to her eight-year-old nephew Bobbie. Truly's brother-in-law is relentless and brutal; he criticizes her physique and the limitations of her health as a result, and degrades her more than any one human could bear. It is only when Truly finds her calling--the ability to heal illness with herbs and naturopathic techniques--hidden within the folds of Robert Morgan's family quilt, that she begins to regain control over her life and herself. Unearthed family secrets, however, will lead to the kind of betrayal that eventually break the Morgan family apart forever, but Truly's reckoning with her own demons allows for both an uprooting of Aberdeen County, and the possibility of love in unexpected places. ~~ synopsis from Goodreads 

My thoughts on The Little Giant of Aberdeen County ~~ 

This was another book club selection and I have to admit that I was not looking forward to reading it. As you know, I am a cover lover and this cover did not do anything for me, AT ALL!

I always try to get the book read each month, kind of like getting my homework done in school, so I started in, thinking I would just plug away until our group met. Well, now I have to say that this is probably one of the best books we have read this year and it generated a lot of conversation. We really had a great discussion.

Truly is born with a disorder that makes her keep growing. They never mention what it is, but I am pretty sure that it's something similar to giant-ism. Her older sister is pretty and petite, everything that Truly is not. Serena has an easy life where Truly doesn't at all.

The story follows Truly's hard life and the decisions that are made for her as she is growing up, as well as the decisions that she has to make on her own, as she becomes an adult. We know that Truly is a good person and has some bad people in her life that take advantage of her goodness.

This was an amazing book and once again it proved to me that I shouldn't judge a book by it's cover. Kind of like Truly and her looks ~ she wasn't pretty to look at, like her sister was, but she had a pretty and generous heart.

This is a great book to read but even more, it is an excellent choice for book groups since there are so many interesting characters and events to discuss. 

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Discussion questions 

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