Althea, Viola, Joe and Lillian were the Butler children. The childhood was not the best as their mother died when they were young and their father was abusive but wasn’t around very much. Althea was only 12 years old when she was left in charge of the family. Their problems as children follow them into adulthood. Althea is now middle age and is on trial, along with her husband Proctor, for food stamp fraud and taking money from their community members through their charitable works. Althea and Proctor were highly regarded for all they did for the community so their fall from grace was difficult for them, their family and the entire community. Their twin teenage daughters, Kim and Baby Vi, are living with Lillian, who has her hands full with them. Viola is now a therapist but struggling with bulimia and is estranged from her wife. And Joe – well, Joe has a lot to be regretful about.

This tale of a dysfunctional family and their demons and the effect of Althea and Proctor’s theft on the family and community failed to capture my heart. I had absolutely no sympathy for Althea and Proctor and the mess they found themselves in. While I did sympathize with the rest of the family, their plight seemed to be removed and I just read the book from a distance. I just didn’t connect with the characters much at all. I found some of the book repetitive and drawn out. It wasn’t a terrible book and I kept reading to find out what happened. There was one point towards the end of the book where I thought the book was finished but was surprised to see that it kept going. I think it would have been a better ending a bit earlier on. Maybe it was just me and from the reviews it does seem that I’m in the minority but I can’t give this book more than 3 stars nor can I recommend it.

This book was given to me by the publisher in return for an honest review.

Such an honest portrayal of families rallying together while they are coming apart.
Althea is the eldest sister, the one in jail, and she must rely on her younger sisters to take care of her girls, as her husband Proctor is also jailed. How does this happen to such a respected family? Do they even know what really happened?
A raw portrayal of a family in crisis, where dysfunction is normal. But can a family come together and heal from the hurt and betrayal they have all suffered?
Anissa Gray weaves a beautiful and emotional story that resonates for so many reasons. What would you do for your family?

This was middling for me. I think my mood might have to do with how I received this book. This was too intense emotionally. It's complicated and the stuff this family went through broke my heart. I really enjoyed Anissa Grey's writing and would be interested in reading more books by her.

Anissa Gray brilliantly captures the true meaning of family. The darkness, the light, and what encompasses the bind as a family.

I truly was left a mess after finishing this book and was completely wowed by Anissa's talent as a writer. A remarkable, powerful, and hauntingly emotional debut about confronting a past that is dark, broken, and fragile.

The Butler's live in a world of dsyfunctionality to it's core. Athlea, Proctor, Viola, Baby Vi, and Kim are struggling to survive the tragedy brought upon their family. As a reader, you feel the power, resistance, love, pain, and angst for this family. My goodness.... was I so rooting for this family and at times had so much anxiety for them.

This is one debut novel that is not to be missed my friends! This is definitely going to be a novel that is brightly shown on my book shelf!

Powerful, raw, beautiful, and inspiring!!!

5 stars!!!

Thank you to Berkley and Netgalley for the advanced arc in exchange for an honest review.

Publication date: 2/19/19
Published to Goodreads: 2/4/19

The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls
By
Anissa Gray
Set in a small town in Michigan, restaurateur Althea receives a multi-year sentence for food stamp fraud and charity embezzlement. Her husband Proctor is also sentenced to jail. The family goes from one of the most respected in town to disgrace.
Her two sisters and her twins are all grappling with what has happened. The book takes you through how their crime causes problems for the entire family. Twins Teenage Kim and Baby Vi are living with Lillian and struggling with the fact that their parents have been jailed for fraud. The author uses a large cast of characters.The novel is narrated by Althea, Viola, and Lillian in alternating chapters. The family face struggles with how to cope.The author develops the story of a dysfunctional family and how they come together through all the trials and tribulations to find a way forward.

I am always interested in a book featuring strong, self-sufficient females, and the Butler women certainly fit the mold! The synopsis claims to be The Mothers meets An American Marriage, which hits the nail on the head!

Althea, Viola and Lillian are no strangers to adversity. Their mother passed away when the girls were very young, leaving Althea, the oldest, to play the role of both mother and big sister to Viola, Lillian and their brother Joe. Their father, a traveling pastor, was rarely around to help, leaving the family reliant on Althea, charity and church donations.

Fast forward to adulthood when Althea, the rock for so long, and her husband are on trial facing criminal charges due to questionable decisions regarding their restaurant business. The tides turn and now Althea must rely on her Viola and Lillian to step in and help with her twin teenage daughters. The Butler sisters are forced to work out their deeply rooted issues and figure out how to move forward under the unfavorable circumstances.

This book was about relationships and family. It is told from the perspectives of Althea, Viola and Lillian. These women find strength from a time of struggle, and they help pick each other up when the others are down. Anissa Gray did a great job of painting the picture of the Butler family, and I found myself lost in the pages.

This one just didn't grab me. Although I love watching a story unfold before me there were just too many things that were left as mysteries- relationships, old resentments, the crimes at the heart of the novel- for quite a while in the book and for some reason I wanted more answers more quickly so I could understand the characters' motivations and interactions. It all felt disconnected to me.

This book took awhile for my brain to wrap around the story. As is so often the case these days, you are just given glimpses of a plot, told from multiple perspectives. Althea and her husband, Proctor, have just been convicted of embezzlement from a charity they ran and are being sentenced to prison. Her two sisters and her twins are all grappling with what has happened. The book takes you through how their crime causes problems for the entire family. A ripple effect personified. It also shows how the siblings’ childhood left scars on each of them and created the damaged adults they have become.

What’s interesting is that there’s no question that Althea and Procter are guilty. That said, they are still sympathetic characters.

Gray fleshed out each of these characters. This book is primarily character, as opposed to action, driven. There’s lots about guilt, forgiveness and healing.

The writing is wonderful. Devote the time and energy to become invested in this story and you will be rewarded.

My thanks to netgalley and Berkeley for an advance copy of this book.

The book centers on a family torn apart by the death of the mother. The father and each child deals with the death in their own way. It's particularly hard on Althea the oldest child. She marries as a teen then is thrust into the role of mother of her younger 3 siblings while their father is a traveling evangelist. Althea never feels like she is enough of anything, daughter, sibling mother figure, or even a mother with her own girls. When Althea and Proctor (Althea's husband) are arrested and sentenced for fraud, all the hurts and pains come to the surface for all the family members especially, Kim, one of Althea's daughters. I didn't know what to expect when starting this book, but I didn't expect to be pulled into this family and each members sorrows.

The Butler Family of "The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls" are not simply dysfunctional, they are dysfunctional to a fault. Althea, Joe, Lillian and Viola lost their mother at a young age. Their father, an itinerant minister, leaves Althea to raise the others, until he doesn't. Years later, Althea and her husband are in legal trouble and jailed, so it falls to Lillian, Viola, and Joe to look after her twin teenage girls. The course of the story is only a few months, with flashbacks describing their childhoods and other earlier events. Chapters alternate in their narration between the adult females, as their individual and family personalities develop and are revealed to the reader. Beautifully written and plotted, I highly recommend this novel for fans of literary fiction and family dramas.

Eldest sister Althea is jailed for fraud and her sisters come together to figure out how to take care her twin daughters. While reunited with their brother in their family home consequences of their upbringing starts to be remembered.

You have to peel back the layers of each character to get to the heart of all three of the sisters problems. Each layer that is peeled away makes the character more sharp in focus as a three dimensional person until you get to their throbbing pain and how they will heal themselves. It's beautiful to watch.

Families seem to rally around each other in times of crisis, even dysfunctional ones where the relationships are complicated and where resentments and hurts have burdened them for many years. This is such an impressive debut and Anissa Gray doesn’t pull any punches here as the Butler siblings come together to care for their teenage nieces whose lives are upended when their parents are imprisoned for embezzling charity money. The past relationships of three sisters, Althea, Lillian, Viola and their brother Joe come to the surface through the multiple narratives of the three sisters. While their concern is for their two nieces and how best to care for them, the things that happened when they were children are still haunting them and are interfering with their desire to help their nieces. Each of them is also facing dilemmas in their present life. On top of this, the complexity of the story is compounded by the fact that one of the daughters, Kim actually reported her parents to the police, bringing to light another difficult relationship of a mother and daughter. There is a lot going on here which makes it hard to discuss without giving anything away. So I’ll just say that this is a wonderfully written story, not an easy one at times, with characters that I cared about from the beginning in spite of their flaws, their mistakes. They are loving people in spite of it all. I couldn’t help but hope from the beginning that there would be a way forward for this hurting family, a way to heal, hoping that they could rise to the occasion to save each other and themselves from what is happening now and what is haunting them from the past. Looking forward to what this author will do in the future. Definitely recommended.

I received an advanced copy of this book from Berkley through NetGalley.

This book was simply wonderful. A husband and wife are in jail for food stamp fraud and for stealing money that was supposed to be used for charities. The family is forced to deal with them being incarcerated while also taking on their own long-standing issues. It is beautifully written and takes on so many problems that families face every day--incarceration, eating disorders, abuse--and how they come together to deal with adversity. This is one of the best books I've read in a while.

This story shows the aftermath of a family dealing with incarceration. Althea and Proctor are jailed for embezzling money from charities and food stamp fraud. We learn the whistle blower is one of their twin teenage daughters. Told in alternating view points we see a family who is still healing from childhood trauma and how that plays out in their adult lives. This book was a quick engrossing read. However, I wish there had been chapters from the view point of the twins included and not just the three adult sisters and Proctor's letters.

This is a story of children growing up without parents in the home. I was torn by Althea. I mean she was so unlikeable but at the same time she had been the oldest and had raised her three siblings. How she could justify her actions was almost beyond me, until the story unfolded and I saw her naked desire for success and approval.
The chaplain tells her “There’s no good in it Althea. What you’ve done doesn’t have to define you.”
“Then what does?”
“Only you know that. No one can tell you who you are.”

That approval - Isn’t’t that not why her sister Viola bought the Lexus? If you’re looking for an action book, you won’t find it here. If you’re looking for character development, this book has it in spades, albeit played out slowly as each of the family finds who they are.

This book is about a family and does a great job of developing the characters. There are three sisters and their brother, a couple of partners, children, and the ghosts of the past.

When Althea and Proctor are convicted of fraud, their perfect lives unravel. They are no longer the upstanding leaders in their community. The reader gets to know Althea and her sisters as we learn about the fallout.

I felt like this book had a slow pace. It is probably because there was a lot of character development. I never fully understood why Althea and Proctor began committing fraud, or why they continued until they were caught. It felt like a weakness in the storytelling.

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

In Anissa Gray’s devastating novel, The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls, the fact that the matriarch of the family and her husband have been sentenced to prison for committing fraud is just the latest in a series of ruptures and betrayals for the Butler family. As the three Butler sisters take turns telling their stories, we realize that this crisis has just shown a spotlight on to all of the family’s closet skeletons.

Althea Butler is the oldest sister. Years ago, when her mother died, Althea was left to take up the role of mother to her younger siblings because their itinerant preacher father refused to stop traveling. Althea lasted four years, until she was 18 and married her sweetheart. Viola, the next youngest, bailed on her youngest sister and only brother when she got into college. Lillian struggled alone against her violent brother. Now, the sisters seem locked into the rolls they formed when they were younger. Althea is extremely stubborn and not always caring. Viola is terrified of responsibility and suffers from bulimia. Lillian struggles to care for leftover and abandoned family members to make up for things that were not really her fault.

I expected that this novel would focus mostly on Althea’s crime; I was very wrong. Althea’s crime remains in the background so that we can focus on what end up being more serious (but unpublishable) crimes the sisters have committed: playing favorites, abuse masquerading as tough love, emotional abandonment, refusal to apologize for past wrong. The emotional wounds run deep in the Butler family. All this might sound like it would make for a depressing novel. But, while there are parts of the book that are quite depressing, Althea’s sentencing may be the kind of crisis that forces the family to finally start making amends.

The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls is a deft but powerful portrait of a broken family. Above all else, it’s emotionally honest. Anything else would have felt cheap or too neat, especially given the effort Gray went to to create characters with fully realized mental illnesses and emotional trauma. Again, this sounds very depressing, but the characters–particularly Viola and Lillian–are stronger than they know. I love characters who discover their hidden depths even though they’ve been bruised and battered for years.

I really enjoyed this novel - the multiple perspectives, the family drama, the tragic circumstances after the mother is gone.

I found this book completely compelling and addicting. This novel follows the aftermath of the incarceration of a married couple, which leaves their twin daughters essentially orphaned. It is told from the point of view of three sisters: the jailed wife and her two younger sisters.

Althea, the eldest sister, is the proverbial backbone of the Butler family. After her mother dies and her father essentially abandons the children, she raises her siblings alone. Now, she finds herself in jail for committing fraud.

Viola, the middle sister, has come home in the midst of personal crises. She has separated from her wife and suffered an eating disorder relapse.

Lillian, the youngest sister, is frightened by everything and overwhelmed with the responsibility of playing caretaker to her nieces and her dead ex-husband's grandmother.

Each sister has a distinct voice within the novel, and all of their storylines work well together. The overarching themes of survival, control, eating disorders, addiction, neglect, and abuse are all intertwined and the message of how resilient humans are, particularly women, resonates throughout the novel.

A really, really interesting read for 2019.

Thank you Netgalley and publishers for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review of this book.

This book has soul. Lots of it. Atmospheric to boot. Intense. Passionate.

I can write a long review, or keep it short and hopefully meaningful. The latter feels more like the right choice for me.

I enjoyed this experience of becoming a silent witness to a family's challenges when an angry member of the Cochran family informs the police about a wrong against a community, resulting in the two pillars of society in the family to land up incarcerated: Althea Marie-Cochran and Proctor Cochran- husband and wife.

Althea: "Boys and men are earth and stone," my mama used to say. " But you girls, us women, we're water. We can wear away earth and stone, if it comes to it." I believed her.

The novel centers around women's issues, with men very much the villains, yet in one case, a man turned out to be the salvation of these divas. Each one of them(the women) had someone to blame for their misfortunes in life, and with that denial of their own choices in the saga, the hurt and sorrow escalated almost to a tragic point. But all's well that end's well, and I closed the book a happy reader.

The Butler siblings:
Joe
Althea
Viola
Lilian
Althea's twin daughters Kim and Baby Vi.

And of course Thelonius, the cat. I liked him the most. My second favorite was Proctor, the level-headed husband of Althea.

The rotten-egg stink (of the mill at the river) was the life's breath of the economy " The smell of money," everybody used to say.

In the town called New River Junction, water played a pivotal role in everybody's lives. First it was the mill, now closed and forgotten which kept the town going. There was also Althea and Proctor's restaurant, where the folks who managed to survived the economic turmoil, could hang out and contribute to the chest destined for those who struggled. Althea was a go-getter, who organized the fundraisers for community assistance, until the question, which both she and Proctor asked themselves on a daily basis, were answered one late afternoon.

Do you think this'll be the night?" It was that night when a family member forced their lives onto a new road to an unimaginable destiny. Actions have consequences, nobody could foreseen. And some of those consequences almost destroyed the family.

Friends were few and far between. David remained Viola's friend throughout everything. They both found a soulmate when as children they started to look for the place where their beloved family members disappeared from life. David called it " Olam Habah" the not-heaven for those who died, like his little brother, and Viola's mother. Their bond would last a lifetime. He remained that friend we all need when the world turns against us.

In jail Althea learnt of speaking stuff into existence. She was forced to address her own actions and forgive those 'sinners' who misunderstood her best intentions. The rest of the siblings finally had to take responsibility for their own actions and turn their own lives around, with uplifting positive results for all.

A pretty predictable plot, presented in excellent prose, with autobiographical details used to fill out the canvas of this novel. An enjoyable experience.

GRIPES: The title has a political undertone.

It's not a bad thing, if you are infatuated with Women's Liberation, identity politics and if you love to dwell on the man-bashing wagon. It clearly warns the reader what to expect. However, the author comfortably move through the mountain of words to write a compelling, heartfelt story with good characters, and a well-arranged modern American family mileu. There is enough reality thrown in for good measure. I liked that. There's not much light sprinkled over everyone's memories. The story is dark, icy cold and snowy - the perfect background for this sad tale. It ends with hope. And good things waiting on the horizon.

A truly enjoyable contemporary read after all.