I found this book incredibly interesting and I read it constantly until the end. What was so interesting? The author is from Canada, the characters were well developed, and it is a story about conjoined twins (yes, siamese twins, but the proper term is conjoined twins). Of course, since Lori is not a twin, much less a conjoined twin, she had to get a lot of information from other stories, but I think she did a good job.

The book is written as an autobiography. One of the twins (Rose) has an aneurysm that will likely kill her soon (and thus her twin). So she decides to write her story. The other twin (Ruby) is offended that Rose could consider writing an autobiography alone. So Rose asks her to write a few chapters from her point of view. The sisters are opposites in most respects – Rose is a tomboy, and loves to read and write. Ruby hates sports and cars. She’s girly and likes to watch TV and movies. Ruby is obsessed with the Neutral Indians (that sounds like a fake tribe name, but it’s real), and manages to find many artifacts on their farm.

The story follows their lives from birth (they were born to an young, unwed mother during a tornado, which is apparently unheard of in Southern Ontario, where the story takes places), to their adoption by the nurse who helped deliver them and her Slovak husband, to their rise to adulthood and independence.

I found the story to be intriguing and well thought-out (Lansens gets away with some author faux pas, and mentions them in the text as the twins, but as she explains, it’s an autobiography, and real life isn’t anything like a novel). It’s not just a story about conjoined twins’ struggle to be normal (and in fact, in their small town, they are accepted, even loved, and called simply, “The Girls”). It is also about the many kinds of love we experience in our lives – parents, sisters, lovers, family, children, community-and about the special bond that sisters have (conjoined or otherwise). It stresses that these girls are normal. They have normal intelligence, abilities, differences, and sexual desires. They just happen to be joined at the head.

When this book was published, Lansens was already famous for the book Rush Home Road, which seems to also be about girls who abandoned and raised by someone else (this time, they are white, and their adoptive mother is a 70 year old black woman). I haven’t read it, but it’s definitely on my wish list.