A suspenseful story about friends, family and sacrifice.
A debut YA novel set in a world of suspicion and violence, narrated by a condemned girl who suffers for the sake of her peers.
Cecily Daye is a seemingly average teenage girl. She lives on her family’s farm with her parents and brother, Dusty, in the fictional country of Stoughton. She has the requisite best friend, Laura Hardy; cranky teacher, Mrs. Dumphry; and adoring boyfriend, Nate Rowe. This semblance of normalcy is at risk, because Cecily is one of the sevens: seven girls “born on July seventeenth at seven-forty-seven p.m.,” who are expected “to become evil” on their 17th birthdays. Pastor Rowe, the hatred-spouting, whip-wielding religious leader of the town of Dunlowe, sees this as a clear indication of evil. “I believe she is trying to be good, but I believe she will fail,” the pastor says of Cecily. In his effort to keep the sevens’ evil at bay, he burdens the girls with a multitude of restrictions—known as “the traditions”—barring them from spending any time together lest they use their purported powers to collude against the town. When Laura dies on Cecily’s 17th birthday, Cecily bears the blame. Pastor Rowe places her in a pillory. The discipline escalates when Cecily makes a false confession in order to protect the other sevens, whom she eventually calls her sisters. Her public whipping galvanizes the girls’ resolve to flee the town that is positioned against them. The sevens’ adventures and revelations are portrayed with plentiful detail, but over time, the story weakens from too many elements. The town of Dunlowe, shivering under Pastor Rowe’s rule, is sufficiently enigmatic—not to mention terrifying—to create suspense and deliver thrills. When the sevens enter the Wild Wood—a forbidden area south of Dunlowe—they encounter monsters and immortals from a place called Darienne. Questions about their identity are finally answered, but the thoroughness of the answers is a disservice to the tale: The uncertainty is part of the fun.
A suspenseful story about friends, family and sacrifice.Pub Date: June 23, 2012
ISBN: 978-0985683900
Page Count: 298
Publisher: Young Mountain Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Downbeat but often engaging poems and stories.
A slim volume of largely gay-themed writings with pessimistic overtones.
Poe (Simple Simon, 2013, etc.) divides this collection of six short stories and 34 poems into five sections: “Art,” “Death,” “Relationship,” “Being,” and “Reflection.” Significantly, a figurative death at the age of 7 appears in two different poems, in which the author uses the phrase “a pretended life” to refer to the idea of hiding one’s true nature and performing socially enforced gender roles. This is a well-worn trope, but it will be powerful and resonant for many who have struggled with a stigmatized identity. In a similar vein, “Imaginary Tom” presents the remnants of a faded relationship: “Now we are imaginary friends, different in each other’s thoughts, / I the burden you seek to discard, / you the lover I created from the mist of longing.” Once in a while, short story passages practically leap off of the page, such as this evocative description of a seedy establishment in Lincoln, Nebraska: “It was a dimly lit bar that smelled of rodent piss, with barstools that danced on uneven legs and made the patrons wonder if they were drunker than they thought.” In “Valéry’s Ride,” Poe examines the familial duties that often fall to unmarried and childless people, keeping them from forming meaningful bonds with others. In this story, after the double whammy of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hits Louisiana, Valéry’s extended family needs him more than ever; readers will likely root for the gay protagonist as he makes the difficult decision to strike out on his own. Not all of Poe’s main characters are gay; the heterosexual title character in “Mrs. Calumet’s Workspace,” for instance, pursues employment in order to escape the confines of her home and a passionless marriage. Working as a bookkeeper, she attempts to carve out a space for herself, symbolized by changes in her work area. Still, this story echoes the recurring theme of lives unlived due to forces often beyond one’s control.
Downbeat but often engaging poems and stories.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5168-3693-2
Page Count: 120
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A volume of poetry that shines when focused on the author’s experiences of race and culture.
A collection speaks in part to the poet’s Mexican-American heritage.
In these multifaceted poems, Mexico-born, Houston-raised Salazar (Of Dreams and Thorns, 2017) explores general human themes like love and war in addition to specific experiences as a person of color. The book begins with a sensual meditation on desire, featuring luscious descriptions of a lover, from lips “moist like youth” to the body’s “softest velvet” slopes. The poems shift to odes to cultural icons like the Tejano star Selena and Mexican-German painter Frida Kahlo as well as occasion pieces honoring his brother’s 40th birthday and a friend’s mother’s memorial service. The author hits his stride when he delves into identity. In “I Am Not Brown,” he contemplates the societal implications of skin tone and his inability to fit into the rigid category of Caucasian or Latino. “For white and black and brown alike / Are slaves to history’s brush strokes,” he writes. “Grateful for the Work,” perhaps Salazar’s loveliest poem, catalogs the day of a laborer, starting with an early morning awakening and following him as he toils in 100-degree heat, enjoys tacos from his lunch pail, buys beverages from a child’s lemonade stand, and returns home to an equally hard-working wife. The author then makes an abrupt turn toward Syria in a series of poems that condemn that country’s president, Bashar Hafez al-Assad. They serve as a rallying cry for Syrians and grieve for the murdered masses. Salazar’s closing poem, “Sons of Bitches,” is a clunky rant about a 20-year-old immigrant shot in the head by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent. The gratuitous violence and political theologizing are ill at ease with the intimate, personal experiences that preceded them, such as the fablelike “A Mexican is Made of This,” in which Salazar beautifully describes the “rainbows, bronze, backbone, butterflies” that his people embody.
A volume of poetry that shines when focused on the author’s experiences of race and culture.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9991496-3-8
Page Count: 166
Publisher: Bronze Diamond Productions
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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