The White Horse
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Writing can open doors to a better life for Raina—but it’s up to her not to slam them shut
Raina doesn’t trust anyone. People either hurt you or leave you—or they die, which is the same thing, really. She used to trust her mother, until her mother chose heroin and a long series of abusive boyfriends over her. Now, sixteen-year-old Raina panhandles on the streets and sleeps in abandoned buildings with her boyfriend, Sonny. She doesn’t tell anyone the truth about her life, at least not out loud, but she can’t stop it from coming out in the poems and stories she writes for her teacher Miss Johnson.
Miss Johnson knows that Raina is smart, perceptive, and utterly locked inside of herself. The concerned teacher reaches out again and again, but Raina’s dreams have been crushed by reality too often. What will it take for Raina to ask for help?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Grant turns out another top-rank problem novel as she unfolds a homeless teen's story via a multistranded narrative. Third-person accounts closely profile Raina as she and her drug-addict "fiance" scramble to find shelter each night; Raina writes bitingly eloquent stories of her childhood for her English teacher (staying in school is desperately important, Raina knows, although she can't say why); and that teacher, Peggy Johnson, privately saddened by the infertility that destroyed her marriage, delivers ironic, self-aware monologues. After the death (a possible suicide) of Raina's boyfriend and her belated acknowledgment of her own pregnancy, Raina reaches out to Peggy for help. Several painful intervals elapse before Peggy sets aside her barely voiced wish for a knight on a white horse to transform her life, and before Raina distances herself from the cruel abuses of a mother addicted to the "white horse"--heroin. Grant carefully builds each character and balances their interactions, avoiding the sensationalism suggested by the story line. An understated and deeply poignant portrayal of a troubled teen. Ages 12-up.
