All You Need

by Sheela Word

Love is not all you need. Truth matters too.

It’s 1968. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy have been assassinated, the Vietnam War has reached new heights, the race to Space is fast and furious—and twelve-year-old Terry Morales is leading a quiet life with her Mexican mom in a small town in Southern California. Everything changes when Terry’s absentee father blows into town. Dirk invites Terry to spend the summer with him on a communal farm in rural Oregon, and she accepts, hoping they can become close.

Living off the grid with a group of strangers is challenging, but Terry’s energy and optimism help her fit in. Winning her father’s affection is more difficult than she expected, however. Dirk is distant, elusive, and preoccupied.

An unexpected event makes Terry’s life much harder. Temporary inconveniences become permanent deprivations. Terry is cut off from the past and facing a future with a father who has come to seem more and more like an enemy. Her self-respect, her happiness, and possibly even her survival are at stake.

Genres: Fiction

419 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 15, 2021

About the author

Sheela Word is a research psychologist who lives in the Pacific Northwest and strives to build fictional worlds that are psychologically real.

Works include the romantic YA novel "Second," the short-story collection “Nine Princesses: Tales of Love and Romance,” the comic middle-grade novel “Naate (Connections),” the picture book “Hari Loved Dorothy," and the literary novel "All You Need." As a half-Indian and the adoptive mother of two Indian children, Ms. Word has a particular interest in multicultural relationships. She also enjoys exploring historical time periods.

She loves her readers.

Reviews

[Florian Armas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading All You Need feels like reading a diary of a thirteen-year-old (but quite mature for her age) girl, written in a third person perspective. It doesn’t really work in the beginning, then it works quite well, even before reaching the ‘family drama’ part. The novel is introspective and full of details, nothing seems to be unimportant; life in a little isolated farm appears to be idyllic until it doesn’t.
The density of the writing style makes things confusing at some points, but it managed to pull all the right strings for me and thus becomes a compelling read.

[J.E. Rowney · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book through Kindle Unlimited.

My main issue with this book was that it simply didn’t interest me or engage me at all. I know that I was probably supposed to empathise with the MC, Terry, as she experiences life in an off-the-grid community, trying to forge a relationship with her father, but the ins and outs of daily life were pretty dull. As a coming of age novel it didn’t hit ti spot for me.

The other issue with this book it that the writing style is sloppy and disjointed. There are a lot of incomplete sentences and grammatical errors, and they could have been picked up with a professional edit.

[Casarah Nance · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good story, filled with a series of unexpected events. It follows a few years of a girl named Teresa, begining at age 11ish who goes off for a summer with her dad whom she barely knows while her mom tends to her dying father. Teresa goes from being a regular kid to being on an eclectic hippy farm where she has few things and barely the necessities. It was only suppose to be for the summer... but.

And then one event after another leads us through the next year's of Teresa's life. It gets interesting and as a reader I wanted to know what happens next because I got attached to her and concerned for her welfare.

My opinions about the book. It was long and detailed. There really wasn't any part that could be skimmed though. It had a lot of plot twists, but not the sense of urgency that some drama books give. It felt the storyteller was calm, not really getting emotionally involved but saying enough to get the reader invested.
I enjoyed the book.

[Gene Kendall · Rating 4 out of 5]

The novel opens as a slice of life, low-stakes drama starring an adolescent girl, then goes in quite an unexpected direction. The opening is a bit slow and the dialogue can be stiff, but the characters are likeable and the setting -- America in the late 1960s -- is always fertile ground for stories about kids coming of age and frenzied societal change. Younger readers, especially ones with an interest in American history, will likely enjoy.

[R.D. Hayes · Rating 5 out of 5]

A time period novel

I wasn’t alive during the Kennedy assassin, but like many I have studied it. To see what it might have been like during that time and what others might have felt is interesting. A lot of research goes into novels written during certain time periods.