Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips

Reviewed by Ted Gioia

Lark is 17 years old, studying secretarial skills in Winfield, West Virginia in the late 1950s. Her mother is gone, her father is a question mark, and the only home she knows is her aunt’s ramshackle house off a gravel alley in a downscale part of town. Her constant companion is her disabled younger half-brother, Termite, an orphan …