Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer

This is a wonderful book populated by quirky characters who you have oh so much affection for as the story progresses from beginning to end.  If someone has not bought the film rights to this book, that needs to happen immediately--it is just perfect for the big screen.

Sunny is a girl who was born bald, and she forms a friendship in childhood with Maxon, a brilliant but autistic boy who is severely physically and mentally abused as a child.  The only reason to think that Maxon's problems with concrete thinking and lack of spontaneity are genetic rather than acquired is that Maxon and Sunny grow up to get married and their son Bubber is also autistic.  Maxon's father beat him mercilessly when he was a boy--one might say sadistically even. He finds psychological and physical shelter with Sunny.  She is his sun and his moon, his stars and his everything.  Then she gives him the ultimate gift.  She comes upon his father in the woods one cold winter night, trapped under a log.  Even knowing that he requires rescuing he is abusive to Sunny, and she does the unthinkable.  She leaves him there.  As a result, he freezes to death and Maxon is freed. 

Sunny and Maxon are somewhere between lovers and siblings their whole life, but Maxon cannot see a life without Sunny and so he asks her to marry him and she accepts.  They both know that they are both damaged in serious ways, but they forge a life together.  The story largely takes place at the end of Sunny's second pregnancy--Maxon is in space and Sunny's mother, Emma, is dying.  The story is equal parts funny, wise, comtemplative, and sad.  I really loved every minute of it and I can only hope when the author writes her second book that it is this wonderful.