the two lion house

"Of all the wishes Elinor wished, and she wished more than most girls her age, she wished most for someone to move into the two-lion house. She would be happy for anyone, she thought, but if one of them turned out to be a 9-year-old girl, especially one who liked cats, well, wouldn’t that be about the best thing that anyone could hope for?" In The Two-Lion House, Bill Smith’s second novel, he introduces us to Elinor Gold, an imaginative and somewhat precocious young girl who is being raised by a protective, widowed mother who “doesn’t have a very good outside smile” and who believes children shouldn’t waste their time “dreaming about things they can never have, or things they will never be.” Elinor’s upstairs bedroom window looks down into the first- floor dining room of the long-vacant two-lion house, a house that ultimately could hold the key to unlocking her own strange, tragic past. Inside the pages of The Two-Lion House, we also meet Mrs. McKinnney, Elinor’s strict but kind Learning Room Teacher; Joe, a family friend who performs amazing feats of magic at his kitchen table; and the Bubble Man, a regular visitor to the neighborhood laundromat next door whose mirrored sunglasses, dinosaur truck and gentle humor combine to fascinate Elinor. Set in small-town Missouri, The Two-Lion House is a haunting novel of one girl’s search for happiness and belonging among the dark secrets of her past. It is a story too of discovery, faith, unshakable perseverance and unexpected courage.