Stranded
-
-
5.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $3.99
-
- $3.99
Publisher Description
My best friend, Katy, says a person with a sparkly two-part name like Kelly Louise should be guaranteed a little glamour and excitement and not be forced to move back to Mom's middle-of-nowhere hometown—now the center of a media frenzy since a farmer found an infant in his cornfield. (It just slipped from some mystery mother's body without anyone noticing.)
Bizzaro.
But Baby Grace shadows every hair flip, every wink, and is keeping me from losing my virginity, despite my dynamite new boots. Even Katy doesn't have any more good advice. The one boy around who rates anywhere near acceptable on the Maximum Man Scale only has eyes for my cousin, Natalie, who only has eyes for Jesus.
But Natalie has a secret.
Everyone is so busy burying the truth about Baby Grace, they can't see who they're burying alive.
Welcome to Heaven, Iowa.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kelly Louise Sorenson is dragged out of Des Moines by her mother to live with her grandmother and cousin Natalie in the nearby small town of Heaven, where a baby was recently found abandoned and dead in a cornfield; this mystery propels the narrative, leading toward an unsettling disclosure. Kelly Louise (an only child raised by a single mother) is used to uninterrupted attention, and when she arrives in her new home, she has to adjust to her grandmother's overbearing rules and her cousin's narrow-minded views. But while Kelly Louise craves "wickedness, adventure, sex, not to be alone, not to be trapped in some distant town away from a place where you could buy coffee," she also marvels at the "sexual traffic" among her peers who've taken abstinence vows. Dutton's (Freaked) complex second novel points to the difficulties of expressing individuality, while also developing compassion for others. Her narrator's voice is sympathetic and consistently punchy ("Sorensons are very emotional possibly the reason we have a history of farm foreclosure and alcoholism"), but it's through her unexpected connection to "Baby Grace" that Kelly Louise reveals her true depth of character. Ages 14 up.
