An Appetite for Miracles

YA romance 

     For anyone looking for truly engaging YA romances for the summer reading 📚 list--have I got a treat for you!  Laekan Zea Kemp's An Appetite for Miracles, told eloquently in verse alternating between the perspectives of the two protagonists, is a tale of teens coping with heart ❤️ breaking challenges finding love and hope.

"When I was little

You fed me

Alphabet soup.

You placed the spoon

in my hand,

showed me how

to swirl the letters,

scoop them up.

D for Danna.

G for Grandpa."

     Danna's beloved ❤️ grandfather was once a well known food critic who traveled the world 🌎 searching for the most evocative and perfect culinary experiences.  Now he stumbles through his days, his wings clipped and his mind fogged by dementia.  Knowing that sensory stimuli can gain patients precious moments of clarity, she experiments with the foods from his past he's written about.

     Danna's mom is not exactly a fan.  She doesn't share her hopes.  And she is always finding ways to fat shame her developing daughter under the guise of helping her make better choices.

"Silk is too unforgiving.

Crops tops show your stretch marks.

V-necks make your boobs look too big.

Dressing room meltdowns

and

Family photo fiasco

and 

Pre-party disasters 

play behind my eyes

until they brim with tears."

     Two years ago Raul's mother had been imprisoned for a crime she didn't commit.  When she's exonerated her return doesn't bring his life back to normal.  She's become super religious and focused on his academic achievement.  In the wee hours of the night he wakes up to hear her up suffering.  He knows that she lost something in prison she can never get back.

     He can't sleep well at night or keep his eyes open in classes.  His grades, not all that good to begin with, are tanking.  But his teachers don't seem to comprehend that there may be something other than lack of effort going on.

"But no one asks me why I can't keep my eyes open,

if I'm sick and need to see the nurse,

if they should call my uncle,

if I need to go home.

It doesn't matter what I need."

     Raul and his mother live with his minister uncle.  As part of this ministry they travel to the homes of dementia patients, playing music 🎶 from their earlier years to buy them precious moments of memory and clarity.

"Anyone who has lost

a piece of themselves,

we try 

to help them

get it back."

     Danna's grandfather is one of their patients.  One day during their session Danna comes into the room.  

"His hand 

is warm.

It sets off an avalanche, 

ice caps melting,

the Antarctic shelf 

plunging

into the sea."

     Danna can't bring herself to ask Raul out.  But she knows that the way to kindle his interest may lie in her deceased grandmother's recipe cards.  She bakes the cookies that family legend says made her grandfather fall in love with her.

     The cookies have the desired effect.  So you have two teens discovering feelings for one another as they cope with forces beyond their control in their individual lives.  Maybe they can help each other survive them.

On a purrrsonal life, my daughter, Amber, has planned to be a horror story writer nearly all her life.  She's working on a trilogy set in a creepy fundamentalist town.  The first book is coming out in print in 2025.  She showed me the manuscript for the second.  It is seriously scary.  Luckily I knew better than to read it after darkness fell.  And she's started work on the final volume.

Amber has been urging me to write ✍️ a book for ages.  She believes I have what it takes to get published.  I've made stabs at it in the past.  But the only thing I've kept up with consistently--as in over a decade--is my notebooks 📓 full of poetry and this twelve year old blog and my journals.  I've promised Amber that this time will be different.  I'll write ✍️ the first draft of my memoir (or at least most of it) by the end of the summer.

An Appetite for Miracles lends new urgency to this task.  My mind is beautifully clear now.  But you never know.  And I don't want to not give Amber a gift that would mean the world to her by waiting too long.

Jules Hathaway 

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