Brief

A sweet and honest look at an all-American family, from the POV of the youngest of three sisters. Despite resenting being bullied by them when younger, the girls grow up to be loyal and supportive of each other.

What We Liked

Audiences will like the down-home quality of this honest, personal memoir. They'll connect with the familiar themes of sibling rivalry, and laugh at the hijinks the girls get into. Told from the POV of the author, we see how as the youngest and smallest she is vulnerable to being drawn into risky situations by her older sisters. Together with being naturally accident-prone, this takes her into some life threatening situations at times! It's nice to see familial lessons being told, how not to take things too far, when to apologize and when to forgive. Despite the often-clashing characters and heated arguments, this is a family that prizes togetherness and unity. The material should do well with a family audience, and also with faith-based audiences. It's good, clean fun.

Film: Easy to shoot for a price with its small cast and limited small-town backdrop. The three sisters are well defined - youngest/baby, rambunctious middle and mediating eldest - as it explores familial themes that are easy to identify with. With more depth in the issues of the parents' divorce and the author's teen pregnancy, this could be a heart-warming story of family confrontation and reconciliation.

TV: Very easy to make for a price with its small-town Ohio backdrop and focus on a single family home. The antics the sisters get up to are highly entertaining, particularly to younger viewers, while imparting worthy and gently told moral messages. It'd make a solid after-school series.

Key points: Honest, fresh narrative. Three well-drawn female leads. Convincing family dramas, confrontations and reconciliations. Amusing sibling antics. Quaint all-American backdrop.

Synopsis

EMILY McCOY was born in 1984 to a modest family living in Deer Park, Ohio, outside Cincinnati. The youngest of three girls she was immediately pegged as a ‘pet’ by her two older sisters LIZ and CHARLOTTE (‘Charlie’). From the start, she felt like an outsider as their antics towards her became increasingly rambunctious, and even abusive. They dub themselves ‘the McCoy Boys’. Em’s childhood is a litany of narrow escapes! When she is just a baby, she is kidnapped from an open-air movie theater by a mentally disturbed man. Her frantic mother races after him and talks the man down. When Em’s beloved grandfather, Poppy, dies, she almost falls into the grave by trying to climb into the open coffin. When her sisters force her to eat some hated cheese sticks, she almost chokes to death, saved only by a Heimlich maneuver by a doctor in the restaurant. On a vacation to Myrtle Beach, her sisters persuade her to wade out beyond waist level and then swim her out far too deep. When they spot sharks, they flee back to the shore, Charlie dragging Emily who almost drowns. During a basement movie night with her cousins, Charlie and Liz sneak in a PG-13 film, Cry Baby, with adult themes and swear words. Mom is shocked when she overhears 7-year-old Em acting out some shocking dialogue with her dolls later! Attending their mother’s annual company picnic at a Water Park, nervous Emily slips on the high water slide and hurtles down out of control, smashing her face on the bottom edge of the slide, almost biting through her tongue. She is surprised when her sisters, usually hostile, dive to the rescue! Dad buys a modest boat and enjoys playing ‘Captain’ in it while it’s parked in their driveway! They go on a camping/cabin trip to a nearby lake and the girls enjoy being dragged around on an inflatable ‘torpedo’ behind the speeding boat. Unwilling to use the nasty public camp toilets, the girls go into the woods to pee – and are horrified to find they’re standing in a nest of snakes!

Mom and Dad separate, with the latter renting a small studio apartment nearby. At Christmas, the girls make an extra effort with holiday decorations. Em is so small she’s dubbed a ‘Helper Elf’. When Mom goes to see her sick mother, the girls are left home alone. Sweet-talking Em, they get her to confess where Mom hides their Christmas presents, in the creepy crawl space. They force Em to bring them all out where they peek beneath the paper to see what they’re getting, and then make Em wrap them up again. On Christmas Day, Mom senses something is off. The girls don’t seem that excited about their gifts. Em realizes that by crossing the line, they have cheated themselves of their usual holiday magic. One game ‘the Great Escape’ – goes too far. Normally, it entails tying Em to a chair and watching her break free. This time, Charlie pushes Em face first into the bed and covers her with a thick quilt, while she struggles to untie her hands. She almost suffocates and passes out, scaring Liz and Charlie. ‘Never fucking do that again!’ Em yells, in an uncharacteristic display of defiance. In the sixth grade, Em breaks her arm in a fall and Mom is so terrified of general anesthesia that she has the doctor forcibly reset the bone without it. As a result, the arm heals crooked. Liz hits her senior year and she and Charlie often fight over boys. Mom demands they spend 30 minutes a day peacefully. Em watches them play croquet on the lawn and is horrified when it turns into a physical fight. Liz throws a heavy ball at Charlie’s head and it smashes into the kitchen’s plate glass window, shattering right onto Em. There’s hell to pay when Mom gets home. Liz goes off to college and Em moves her room, happy to have privacy at last. However, she soon misses the noise of her combined older sisters, as does Charlie apparently, as the latter soon comes to her room to have sisterly chats. At the Homecoming Dance, Em finally sees Charlie’s weakness: she is desperate to be the best, to be popular, and nervous she won’t be voted Queen. Luckily, she is. The family are gifted a used trampoline and over the summer, Em gathers her friends. With Liz away and Charlie off with older boys, she has more time to enjoy her own crew at home. When Charlie and a couple of her girlfriends force them off, Em and her friends bombard them with water balloons. It turns into an all-out fight which leaves them all soaking wet and laughing. However, things go too far when Charlie dares everyone to jump off the porch roof onto the trampoline. Em is the last to go and by now, the weakened structure gives way, tossing her onto the ground! Mom is furious when she comes home and makes the sisters work jobs all summer to pay for repairs.

Mom is mollified when, returning to school, both Charlie and Em are elected class presidents for their years! Em finds herself being noticed and more accepted at school, and even draws admiring looks from one cute older boy! That Christmas, Dad goes all out and showers the girls with dozens of gifts, even $200 each in cash. They’re worried he’s borrowed too much money or got into trouble with his business. The basement is filled with supplies, a bed, a generator and even guns. Is Dad in trouble? He explains it’s for Y2K though, of course, when the new century rolls in, nothing happens. Charlie graduates and goes off to college and Em is left alone! At first, it’s tough, with both of her parents moping around – but she soon learns to like having their sole attention. When the family is reunited at Thanksgiving, the sisters have a renewed appreciation for each other. Their childhood rivalry and bullying is long behind them. Charlie shocks her parents by opting to studying abroad in Australia for a semester. Mom warns her to get no tattoos/piercings, skydive or get an Aussie boyfriend. Charlie does all three! At 18, in her senior year, Em finds herself pregnant by an on-off boyfriend. They can’t make things work and Em decides to have the child. She works three after school jobs to save money. She graduates with honors and has a sports scholarship to college – but can’t use it. At 19, Emily gives birth to adorable Ellie and her family rally round her. She remains living at home, enjoying new motherhood. After a year, she enrolls in a local college, with plenty of babysitting help from her parents and sisters. She graduates when Ellie is 6 and finds a job as an ultrasound technician. Her income is good enough to buy her own small home very close to her parents. Beloved grandma Apple dies and it’s the end of an era. Em has a string of terrible dates but finally meets KP (late 20s) and in 2013, they are married. Her parents are shocked when she declares she’s quitting her hospital job to focus on writing, but, as always, they support her. Emily writes this book, Surviving McCoy.

About The Author

The author's debut memoir is painfully earnest but at the same time, backs away from deeper emotions about tricky subjects like divorce and teen pregnancy. The material is quite 'safe', and might be suitable for conservative and/or faith-based family audiences. The story is well-written and an easy read, with warm-hearted and valuable lessons for parents and teens.