Saffy's Angel by Hilary McKay

McKay, Hilary. Saffy's Angel. New York: Aladdin, 2001.

Have you ever felt like you don’t belong? Like you’re different? Of course. Everyone feels like this at one time or another. Saffy Casson knows that feeling. The difference is that Saffy feels like an outsider in her own family.

Saffy has a happy, eccentric family with a mother, a father, two sisters and a brother. One day that changes. Saffy no longer knows who her family is, who she is. She’s adopted. Her mother is not her mother, but her aunt. Her sisters and brother are her cousins. A few excerpts illustrated how Saffy feels about her discovery:

“Everything seemed to change for Saffron after the day she deciphered the color chart and discovered that her name was not there and found out why this was. She never felt the same again. She felt lost” (9).

“It seemed that the whole pattern of her family was slipping and changing, like colors in water, into something she hardly recognized” (10).

Years pass and Saffy accepts the fact that she’s adopted, but she always feels like an outsider. When her grandfather dies, he leaves her a stone angel in his will. Saffy becomes obsessed with finding the angel. It’s part of her past, from the time when she belonged. Will finding the angel help Saffy belong again?