ESCAPING TORNADO SEASON

The tornado that is a prologue to this work, set in northern Minnesota in the early 1960s, serves as a metaphor for lives ripped asunder much as a genuine twister tears up land and property. A lot in 14-year-old Allie’s life falls apart: her beloved father dies; her emotionally unstable mother disappears ever more frequently; and she witnesses shocking injustices committed against Native American neighbors and classmates. As with the heroine of Karen Hesse’s Out of the Dust, Allie, a gifted writer, describes her feelings and the ways she learns to come to grips with tragedies, uncertainties, and a forbidden first love in the detached, first-person poems that set out the story. The disjointed, non-narrative style carries the novel’s torn-apart metaphor further, yet somehow, there is order and a flow amid the chaos. Teens will be drawn into Allie’s exploration of her pain and how she learns, through the strength of family bonds, to “escape tornado season.” Some mild expletives throughout will seem realistic and justified. (Fiction. 12+)