HEARTLAND

An environmental mystery unfolds alongside a personal one on a family farm in Iowa.

Twelve-year-old Xyla, a keen horologist, much prefers to be at the library or with her collection of clocks instead of doing daily chores on the farm where five generations of her white family before her have lived. Unfortunately, her single mother’s demands never seem to end. With no information about her father, not even his name, Xyla’s questions gnaw at her, and she’s desperate for answers. The arrival of bubbly Alegría DeSoto, the daughter of Mexican immigrants who are renting a house on the farm, brings a fresh perspective to Xyla’s search. Xyla’s mother’s interspersed journal entries, mostly from the 1980s, appear in verse and chronicle an unfolding crisis. Hoffmann strikes a strong balance between history, science, and contemporary environmental concerns. The characters’ emotions echo across the dual timelines. Without overwhelming readers, the story makes space for multiple complex issues, including an authentically portrayed neurodiverse main character who’s prone to amusing exclamations (“Gagging hagfish!”, “Tasmanian turd-twizzlers!”, “Backstabbing botflies!”). Along with the storylines following Xyla and her mom as a young person, this creative novel includes interludes from the perspective of time, the weather, and the land, giving readers a multidimensional perspective on the farm and the intergenerational struggle for understanding.

A warmly genuine and starkly accurate rural environmental story.