Author: Jeff Zentner
Publisher: Crown

From the award-winning author of The Serpent King comes a beautiful examination of grief, found family, and young love. Life in a small Appalachian town is not easy. Cash lost his mother to an opioid addiction and his Papaw is dying slowly from emphysema. Dodging drug dealers and watching out for his best friend, Delaney, is second nature. He's been spending his summer mowing lawns while she works at Dairy Queen.

But when Delaney manages to secure both of them full rides to an elite prep school in Connecticut, Cash will have to grapple with his need to protect and love Delaney, and his love for the grandparents who saved him and the town he would have to leave behind.

Let’s begin with what this novel is not: high action, mystery, romance. It’s neither humorous nor violent. Nor is it uplifting (except tenuously at the end).

It’s slow, perceptive and often heart-wrenchingly sad as it dissects grief and longing. It’s more about bereavement than anything, although the authentic teen banter often provides comic relief.

“Dr. Hannan’s a therapist. Her job is literally to help you be less anxious,” I say. “I’m worried about what she’s gonna find in my head.” “What, like going fishing and you pull up an old boot?” “Exactly that.”“ I don’t think that’s how therapists work.” “It’s not. I studied up. Still. Aren’t you nervous?” “I’m mainly worried she won’t find anything at all in my head.” “Valid fear.”

The protagonist is torn between love of the familiar and the discomfort of exploring new opportunities in a new environment, even as he’s haunted by the past.

When you grow up with ugliness and corruption, you surrender to beauty whenever and wherever you find it. You let it save you, if only for the time it takes for a snowflake to melt on your tongue or for the sun to sink below the horizon in a wildfire of clouds.

She saves up vigilance for the times she doesn’t feel safe—it’s what I used to do—and it all comes crashing down when she’s in a secure place, a burden she can no longer bear.

There’s a love story that unfolds, but it’s not front and center; in fact, it’s predictable from early on. But where love is concerned, the young protagonist’s emotions are revealed as delicately and poetically as the rest of the story.

I can’t imagine what will happen if I ever get to kiss her. My heart will probably just dissolve and run down the walls of my chest.

In all, the novel is philosophical, achingly slow and gentle, and full of beautiful prose.

He only has a few years on me, but looks far older. His eyes are the shade of weapon gray that someone would pick out for themselves if God didn’t have rattlesnake yellow in stock. No compassion or intelligence in them. Only cunning—and sizing you up for cracks.

Given that the protagonist develops a love of poetry, we’re also treated to insightful poems.

To learn of loss is only to know it a little and not to become armored against its fearsome edge.

Except for the protagonist’s roommate (who seems to exist only for want of a token bad guy), the characters are fully drawn. They’re also multi-ethnic (including a girl from Brazil and a Texan American-Korean) and totally realistic as contemporary adolescents.But let’s let the writing and theme speak for itself:

Every inhalation of his is like the tick of a clock counting down. That I got to experience a semi-normal childhood for the last few years, with something like parents, seems like enough good fortune for one lifetime. It feels greedy to desire more. The rocker on the other side of me—Papaw’s favorite—sits still and silent. A vast and lonesome emptiness. One that will ache as long as I can feel. But I’m healing. I once thought of memory as a tether. I still do, in a way. But now I also see memory as the roots from which you grow toward the sun. “I’ll tell you the truest thing I know: You are not a creature of grief. You are not a congregation of wounds. You are not the sum of your losses. Your skin is not your scars. Your life is yours. And it can be new and wondrous. Remember that.”

- P.W.