Unsinkable Cayenne

Vitalis, Jessica. Unsinkable Cayenne
October 29, 2024 by Greenwillow Books

E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

It's 1985, and Cayenne's family has been living in a 1969 camper van, traveling the US. Her father is a Vietnam vet who is on disability, and her mother is a free spirit who doesn't want to be tied down to a conventional lifestyle. However, since the birth of Cayenne's twin siblings, Bear and Sossity, it's been more difficult to maintain this nomadic way of life, and Cayenne's father has gotten a job in a sawmill in Montana. The family is renting a house, and Cayenne is very excited to be able to stay in one place and go to school. The house is rather run down, and she's a little concerned about fitting in to her new school, but there are some hopeful signs. The family finds a dog, George, and Cayenne sees a cute boy in the neighborhood. He turns out to be new to the school as well. Cayenne starts to play the flute, and would like desperately to be as popular and untroubled as the other flute players, who look down their noses at her worn and unstylish clothing. She does befriend the bookish Dawn, whose father is a doctor and whose mother is a nurse. This secure family situation allows her to match her outfits to the books she is reading. She's nice, but Cayenne can tell that Dawn is a bit of an outcast, and worries about aligning herself with her. She's happy to befriend Tiff, one of the flute players, even when Tiff criticizes her shoes. Beau is rumored to be interested in her, but Cayenne finds herself tongue tied in his presence, and thinks that she is being taunted when his friends give her Beau's phone number and tell her to call. Her teacher is very excited about the fact that the wreckage of the Titanic has been found, and many of their school projects revolve around this historic event. Cayenne is still concerned that her mother is going to alienate her new friends; she's raising chickens in the yard, and was very cold to Tiff's mother when the woman brought over cookies, since she is not about to embrace something as conventional as the PTA. Even though things are financially difficult, especially after her father is laid off from the sawmill, Cayenne is hopeful that things will work out and her family will be able to stay put. The class projects on the Titanic show the socioeconomic disparity in the number of deaths, and Cayenne sees the parallels in her own life, and wonders why having more money should translate into a person being more valued. While there is some kindness from her friends' families when Cayenne's parents are really strapped, it's not enough to keep them in their home. Luckily, when they hit the road again, they run into another family with a similar outlook, and Cayenne is able to understand that while their lifestyle might not be the most "normal" one, it still has some positive aspects to it. 

Strengths: There are LOTS of good historical details about fashions, news, and prevailing thoughts in 1985; from Swatches and Benetton to the ubiquity of perms, this hits all of the highlights. I also appreciated that the dates worked for the parents being hippies, especially since there have been relatively few middle grade books with fathers who fought in Vietnam. Cayenne has a good idea of what it takes to fit in during middle school, and she makes realistic attempts to be cool by piercing her own ears and using a cash windfall to buy new sneakers. Dawn was a great character, as was Tiff, and I was glad that Cayenne did have a few good friends and wasn't completely alone. The crush on Beau was very sweet, and I loved that he invited her on an outing with his parents! The information about the Titanic, and the different death rates for different social classes, was quite interesting, and this gets bonus points for mentioning the movie The Unsinkable Molly Brown. (If you're even in Denver, you can still visit her house!) Comparisons with Fipps' And Then... Boom are apt, due to the verse format as well as the questionable parenting, and this is a great addition to other books about families who are struggling to make ends meet, including Supplee's The Sweetness All Around, Walker's Why Can't I Be You, and Ogle's Free Lunch. 
Weaknesses: A parent smoking marijuana openly in 1985 would have been VERY concerning. Modern readers will have a vague idea that marijuana is now legal under certain circumstances, but I was a little surprised that the father's (then) illegal use wasn't explained more. 
What I really think: This is set a few years earlier than Toalsen's The First Magnificent Summer but definitely has some similarities. The comparison that popped into my mind (maybe because of the similarities in the names) was this: if Gemeinhart's The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise ended and sequed into Eulberg's The Best Worst Summer (because of the 1980s cultural details) but was written in verse, you'd have Unsinkable Cayenne! This also made me think of all of the parents in Jacqueline Wilson's novels.