Well, my guess as to where McGuire would take this series next was wrong.  I forgot that this series is unlike anything else written. The stories do not progress in a tidy, linear fashion.  They float about until McGuire plucks one out to tell us.

Nadya lives in a Russian orphanage.  It's rather like most orphanages; others might be better, some might be worse.  But Nadya has a place there. She knows the matrons, she knows the children, she knows how to help them get adopted; and she had her beloved tortoise.  She's the one who knows the children well enough to present them just-so to prospective parents.  But never for herself.  Finally, the well-meaning matrons force her to meet an American couple looking for a disadvantaged child; one that no one else would want.  (Apparently, their pastor impressed upon them they should do this.) And since Nadya had been born without one arm, she qualified.  Nadya had never missed something she had never had.  She had never felt that she was less for the absence of one arm; until she was adopted by Carl and Pansy.  Pansy was determined that this child they rescued would be as perfect as possible; and, of course, immensely grateful to her new parents.  Pansy was not to be satisfied.  And it was Pansy, of course, who insisted on providing a prosthetic arm for Nadya and it was both Pansy and Carl who simply could not understand why their difficult child didn't see the arm as a great gift.  Frankly, for Nadya, it was alien, scratchy and uncomfortable.  The only spot of joy in Nadya's life is her visits to a nearby turtle pond.  They weren't exactly like her beloved Maxsim, the tortoise, but she knew them and they knew her. So it wasn't a mystery to this reader why she spotted what looked like a door in the turtle pond. 

Nadya found herself in a Drowned World and she was a Drowned Girl to all she met.  This world of water was still a place where people could live so long as they kept to the 'lightest' water level.  Heavier water could still drown them.  The society worked with humongous turtles who provided brute strength and companionship.  It was a weird and wondrous place where Nadya found herself welcomed and accepted just as she was.  She had several adventures, making a family, fast friends, and even found herself adopted as a companion to a turtle.  And as she grew into a young women, she even found love.  But she never, ever looked back to that time before she fell into the pond.

McGuire has a deft hand in these brief stories.  She tells a spare tale that doesn't waste words or space but they are, frequently, heart-breaking.  This one, in particular, saddened me.  If McGuire would hear a plea: please revisit Nadya and give her another chance.     ~~ Catherine Book

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