In her author's note to Wolf by the Ears, Rinaldi says: "The theme of alienation has always intrigued me . . . My own mother had died when I was born.

I never knew her family or even saw a picture of her until I was married. So there was always a part of me I could not acknowledge, a part of me I yearned to understand." Even though Rinaldi makes this remark in reference to her understanding of the alienation that Harriet Hemings, possibly Jefferson's slave daughter, might have felt, there is relevance here to But in the Fall I'm Leaving. Brieanna's mother had left her when she was two. After having recently visited her out in California, Brieanna plans on living with her again. But the girl is unsure whether her mother loves her.

Brieanna's sense of alienation, her feelings about being somehow unwanted (by...