Book Review--The Tiger's Child, by Torey Hayden

The Tiger's Child is the sequel to One Child. It was published in 1995, fourteen years after One Child. In the prologue, the author says that she was hesitant to write a sequel, simply because much of what was going on in Sheila's life since was rather grim. Torey changed her mind about writing a sequel in response to numerous queries from her readers, and also in response to Sheila, who overcame her abusive and deprived background to become a competent adult.

The first 40 pages of the book are a review of One Child. Torey wrote that book in eight days, never intending to publish it, but rather to better understand her relationship with Sheila. When she finished it, she realized that she had a book, and that she needed to find Sheila and let her read it.

Finding Sheila was not an easy task. Torey had lost contact with her five years previously, and had not seen her for seven. When Torey found her again, Sheila was thirteen. She was living with her father, but she had spent some time in foster care. It was strange for them both, to see each other again after so much time had passed. They both felt as though they knew each other well, but after so much time, they really were strangers. Furthermore, Sheila's memory of the experience and of Torey was not entirely positive. Torey had moved away at the end of the school year that Sheila had been in her class. Sheila had difficulty separating Torey's leaving from her mother's abandonment of her. At one point, she told Torey that she had actually made things worse for her, in that Sheila had not realized how bad her life was before being in Torey's class.

Personally, I think the problem was that Torey wasn't really in a position to do more. The problems in Sheila's life were simply too big to easily fix, and Sheila had little else in the way of support. She had a drug addicted, alcoholic father and a string of foster homes. There's only so much a teacher can do, no matter how much she cares. But when she found Sheila again, they had a chance to work through some of Sheila's issues and form a relationship again.

All of this does sound pretty grim, but the book does have a reasonably happy ending. Sheila does amazing well, especially considering everything she has been through. This book is able to include more of her point of view than the first book, since she is older, and it is interesting to see how she viewed things. This book is also an amazingly fast read, and hard to put down.