A HORSE BROUGHT US HERE

McDevitt presents a historical novel about growing up in America’s heartland and the perils of young womanhood in the late 1950s.

Nella Fortune, Midge Mahoney, and BJ Bonniface are three of the most popular girls at their small high school in smalltown Juniper, Wyoming. BJ is going steady with Rob Hitchcock, the football team’s star quarterback; she decides in a moment of passion to take her relationship with him to the next level, and she becomes pregnant after their very first sexual encounter. By the time she realizes it, she’s well past the window for a safe abortion. At first, Nella and Midge have no idea what’s going on with BJ; she suddenly seems cold and distant, and her mood isn’t even improved by becoming homecoming queen. Just as the two girls start comparing notes about their friend’s sudden aloofness, the school counselor calls them into her office, where the girls receive some life-changing news: BJ is dead. The story is that she went into anaphylactic shock from a wasp sting, died nearly instantly, and was cremated immediately, with no funeral. As the girls struggle to make sense of this tragic turn of events, they’re quickly suspicious when Nella remembers that she’s seen BJ get stung by a wasp before with no adverse reaction. Nella becomes determined to find out what really happened. Over the course of the novel, McDevitt sketches the era convincingly, highlighting a culture in which gender stereotypes abound. The story is told from Nella and Rob’s first-person perspectives, which gradually reveal the truth in often-lovely prose that effectively captures the pastoral Wyoming scenery and the culture that thrived in it, as when Nella briefly recalls her days at a ranch with BJ: “The sweet, heavy hay smell of the barn when we put our cheeks to the side of their dairy cow, Buttercup, listening to the underwater sloshes and gurgles from her unborn calf, BJ’s future 4-H project.” Fans of literary period pieces will enjoy this novel, which offers a smooth, controlled journey through a tragic tale.

A vivid, engaging story of the death of a homecoming queen.