SHATTERED

It ought to be the best day of 14-year-old Cassie’s life—the day of her violin solo with the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra—but her always-angry dad is more jittery than usual. When her estranged grandfather appears, it’s the last straw for her dad. Not long after the concert, he explodes, hurling her cat across the room and shattering her violin. Cassie flees to Pretoria in search of her grandfather but instead finds herself alone and overwhelmed in a strange city. Kind strangers, churches and teen shelters help her survive, but she’s not cut out for the dangers and privations of homelessness. Returning home, Cassie joins her family on the long, hard slog toward repairing their lives. Cassie’s love for the violin provides much-needed flavor for what would otherwise be a simple problem novel about emotional abuse and helpless teens. Too quickly, therapy, truth telling and interfamily trust offer the magic pill to cure PTSD. Still, this poignant story of multigenerational abuse is a compelling read. (Fiction. 11-13)