Torn Pages — Sally Grindley

There's something about a storm in the middle of the night that gathers a family close. It's as if nothing else exists outside that huddle of love in a blacked-out room which, try as it might, the storm cannot overwhelm. The storm that Liddy faces is the storm of AIDS, that is attacking their small African community. It has taken away from her for ever her mother and father. With her brother, Joe, Liddy must try to bring up Kesi, their little sister. There is never enough to eat, they cannot afford to go to school, and even their grandmother goes out her way to make life difficult for them. But their mother's voice of love is still there to guide them, in the handwritten diary which she left for them.