Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson

I have long admired Woodson for her young adult novels and this adult novel about four young girls growing up in Brooklyn in the 70's only increases my admiration.  The style is prose bordering on poetry - each word carefully chosen to explore issues of place, fate, race, and above all friendship.  When August is forced to move North to Brooklyn as a young girl, she can only longingly observe the trio of young women that pass beneath her window.  When she is finally drawn into that group, she feeds off the strength that such a friendship brings.  It redefines family and provides a powerful framework from which to decide the truth of growing up.  Not all the girls draw on that same strength. When August returns for her father's funeral, educated and successful,  the difference between lives dreamed and lives lived is painfully revealed.  So much to think about in just 192 pages.