Four YA treasures By Jennifer Mathieu

Four YA treasures By Jennifer Mathieu

Recently (less than a month--although it feels like an eternity
in COVID time--ago) I was so impressed with the insightfulness and
authenticity of Jennifer Mathieu's Bad Girls Never Say Die I googled
to see if she had any other books. The stars were with me. I found
four--all available from cooperating libraries. The day I picked them
up from my library you'd better believe I did my happy dance. After
reading them I was so impressed with Mathieu's talent. Her characters
face really diverse challenges authentically and engagingly.

"I, Elaine O'Dea, am going to tell you two definite, absolute,
indisputable truths.
1. Alice Franklin slept with two guys in the very same night in a bed
IN MY HOUSE this past summer, just before the start of junior year...
2. Two weeks ago--just after homecoming--one of those guys, Brandon
Fitzsimmons (who was crazy super popular and gorgeous and who yours
truly messed around with more than once) died in a car accident. And
it was all Alice's fault."
Before his untimely demise at the beginning of The Truth About
Alice, Brandon Fitzsimmons was his Texas town high school's
quarterback, their great hope for the first state championship in a
looooong time. Parents say what a shame it is that he had to die so
early in the football season. And in school among her peers Alice is
a pariah and the subject of some very vicious bathroom stall writing.
The truth, of course, is a lot more complex than any of those
almost reflexive assessments.
Elaine is the high school alpha female, the one who hosted the
party that set everything in motion and who had deemed Alice cool
enough for an invite. She was Brandon's on again, off again.
Kelsie is a transplant from Michigan, embarassed by her mother's
extreme religious fundamentalism. Invisible in her former school, she
took the move as a chance to become popular. Alice got her into the
in crowd. But now being Alice's friend may be too much of a social
liability.
Josh, Brandon's teammate and friend, survived the accident.
People act like his prime concern is when he'll heal up enough to
return to the field rather than the sudden needless death of his
closest chum. He knows he contributed to the rumor by what he told
Brandon's mom when she kept pressing him for information right after
he got out of the hospital.
At first Kurt's inclusion seems like a one of these things just
doesn't belong straight out of Sesame Street. An orphan being raised
by his grandparents, he's an academic high achiever who has no
interest in sports or the high school scene. But he was Brandon's
next door neighbor. And he's offered to tutor Alice in math because
even boy geniuses can have crushes.
Told in their alternating voices, this finely crafted narrative
gives a complex and nuanced picture of a girl who was far more than
the school slut and the environment she had to exist within.

Devoted
"...I let myself wonder for a moment about my future husband and
what he will be like, and I try to imagine myself returning to my
parents' house in just a few years [for Sunday dinners] with my own
children. It's meant to be, but when I try to picture it, my head
goes blank and my stomach twists."
Rachel, protagonist of Devoted, is the oldest still to home
daughter in a family of twelve. Her family belongs to an extremely
fundamentalist church. Her future was determined the moment she
emerged from her mother's womb with female genetalia. She would be
trained to be a helper to her future husband, submitting to him in all
things.
Rachel is going through a rigorous apprenticeship. Her mother
has sunk into a deep depression following the miscarriage of what
would have been her eleventh child. The boys closest to her in age
aren't expected to pitch in with anything household related. So she
has the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and nurturing of the littlest five
(including their home schooling--schools in the wicked world are not
to be trusted) to do, aided by younger sister, Ruth.
Rachel is not making the transition towards hausfrau with the
same ease as older married sister, Faith. She treasures a copy of a
book purchased at a thrift shop she's sure her father wouldn't want
her reading. She has many things she'd like to understand. Why did
God give her a questioning mind when her destiny, the future that
terrifies her, will not allow her to use it?
Rachel isn't the first to harbor inconvenient questions and
desires. Youth who don't conform enough are sent to a brutal
fundamentalist camp, Journey of Faith. They come back shadows of
their former selves, but never fully accepted back into the only
community they've ever known.
Rachel lives in terror of being sent there. But when a girl not
much older than her, Lauren, who ran away instead of letting her
parents ship her off, returns to town (although not to her family)
Rachel is curious enough to contact her.
And when Lauren makes a lot of sense Rachel is caught in a
terrible dilemma.
This class of cultures novel is truly captivating, giving
readers a chance to engage with a millieu very different from the one
most of us frequent.

Afterward
"My mother takes the vase from the bookshelf and hurls it, smashing it
to bits by my father's bare feet. My father doesn't even step back as
the tiny pink and white pieces of ceramic skid past him on the
hardwood floor. He just stands there staring.
'Dylan! Dylan, where are you?' My mother shrieks my brother's
name and collapses into the mess she's just made."
Any mom would be upset if her eleven-year-son disappeared.
Dylan's mom has much more reason than most to panic. Her son is low
functioning autistic, unable to communicate his thoughts and
feelings. What if he's been kidnapped by someone who wouldn't
understand?
"It's not one police officer who shows up but four or five.
They have their guns up like on television and in the movies, and the
little kid whose name I don't know and who is who is sitting next to
me on the couch watching me play video games wets himself when they
bust in..."
When Dylan is discovered following the suicide of their
kidnapper he isn't alone in the apartment. Ethan was kidnapped four
years earlier at eleven from the same neighborhood. Being home holds
its own challenges. His parents keep him on a tight leash,
homeschooling him with a tutor to help him catch up after years of
noschooling. His mother needs to keep him in sight or at least with
his phone on him at all times.
Caroline, Ethan's big sister, is sure something terrible must
have happened to him in the four days he was missing. He's behaving
as though trapped in a nightmare. But their parents' coping strategy,
denial, revolves around forgetting that the kidnapping. So she seeks
out the only living person who knows what he went through and might be
able to help her help him...
...He's forgotten a lot himself and is slowly regaining memories
in therapy. But somehow the teens hit it off. Their narrative, told
in alternating voices, gives readers insight into negotiating
relationships under far from ideal circumstances while coping with
fallout from acts of random cruelty.

The Liars Of Mariposa Island
I am always discovering aspects of history my white washed high
school textbooks forgot to mention when I read YA novels. (One of the
many reasons I tend to prefer them to adult adult works). In The
Liars of Mariposa Island I learned about Operation Pedro Pan (Peter
Pan). The Catholic Welfare Bureau basically smuggled 14,000 Cuban
children to the United States, placing them in homes and orphanages,
after Castro came into power.
Teenage Caridad had lived most of her life in what to her was an
island paradise. Her family was among the very well off. Her parents
were successful and rich. She had a maid to wait on her. The focus
of her life was her upcoming lavish quinceanera (15th birthday). Some
families were cancelling them due to rebel attacks. But she was sure
her parents wouldn't let her down.
Ironically her troubles started at that long awaited event. A
bomb went off in the elaborately decorated hotel that was the venue.
The boy she was in love with didn't survive. Goods became rationed.
Her beloved maid was replaced. One day she was on a plane to the
United States to a house that would never feel feel like a home to
her. Her parents died, making their reunion or a return to her
beloved island out of the question. As the story opens she is single
parenting her two teen children on a Texas island.
Her daughter, Elena, feels trapped by her mother's rules and
expectations. Caridad fears that she will morph into a bad girl. She
calls the house frequently from work and punishes Elena if she isn't
there to answer the phone. The only time Elena isn't under what
amounts to house arrest is in the summer when she babysits for a
family, the Callahans, that summers on the island. If the parents get
back before they're expected she is able to spend time with her friends.
Elena's older brother, Joaquinn, has just graduated high
school. He's waiting tables at a restaurant, clueless about what he
wants to do with the rest of his life. He has some vague plans to go
to California where he's been told his father now lives. But he's in
a relationship. He worries about Elena who is creating fictitious
babysitting gigs to spend time with a drug dealer. He has no
delusions about his mother's alcoholism.
The intense narrative, told in their three alternating voices,
covers a summer in their family's life. It's a thought provoking look
at people doing their best within the constraints of life's
circumstances.

On a purrrsonal note, on my first day of winter break (yesterday) I
decided to make a Goodwill run. I got to the bus stop an hour early
and just hung out and read. Some people freaked. But temps were in
the 20s with no wind chill--balmy for winter Maine. I didn't find
much but still had a good time. I actually offered to share my
caramel core ice cream with Eugene. Last night it started snowing.
Eugene was called out to plow. Barring a heat wave that doesn't seem
all that likely it looks like we'll be having a white Christmas. (Jules)
I wonder what Santa will leave in my stocking. (Tobago)
A great big shout out goes out to you, dear readers. Hope you're
experiencing no glitches in your plans for safe and festive holidays.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway


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