CIRCLE THE SOUL SOFTLY

Katie’s starting tenth grade at a ritzy private school in the new community where her mother’s fiancé lives. Katie, her brother Michael and her mom have survived the death of her father from cancer, but Katie feels awkward and numb until auditions for the school play. Drama allows her to free herself from shyness and her feeling of invisibility. As Katie learns about her fellow actors, she becomes increasingly sure that a particularly obnoxious girl has been abused. Merely raising the possibility pushes Katie to look into her own history and begin asking hard questions about the monster of her nightmares that seems to be leaking into the present. Essential to her discoveries is the burgeoning relationship with David, a thespian, a gentlemen and the perfect boyfriend. Realizing that she isn’t having a normal experience with her first ventures into romantic arousal keeps Katie from getting sidetracked from pursuing the truth. The setting of privilege and the usual accompanying temptations of drugs and alcohol doesn’t overwhelm Katie’s own search and the kind people who surround and support her. A fairly graceful presentation of an ungraceful topic. (Fiction. YA)