The Deep Dark: A Graphic Novel
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
From Molly Knox Ostertag, writer-illustrator of the New York Times and ABA Indie bestselling The Witch Boy trilogy and The Girl from the Sea, comes a darkly beautiful story of identity, family, love, loss, and magic.
Everyone has secrets. Mags’s has teeth.
Magdalena Herrera is about to graduate high school, but she already feels like an adult with serious responsibilities: caring for her ailing grandmother; working a part-time job; clandestine makeouts with a girl who has a boyfriend. And then there’s her secret, which pulls her into the basement each night, drains her of energy, and leaves her bleeding. A secret that could hurt and even kill if it ever got out -- like it did once before.
So Mags keeps her head down, isolated in her small desert community. That is, until her childhood friend Nessa comes back to town, bringing vivid memories of the past, an intoxicating glimpse of the future, and a secret of her own. Mags won’t get attached, of course. She’s always been strong enough to survive without anyone’s help.
But when the darkness starts to close in on them both, Mags will have to drag her secret into the daylight, and choose between risking everything... or having nothing left to lose.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Restrained high school senior Mags Herrera diligently shoulders every responsibility that gets thrown at her. Even over Christmas break, she cares for her ill abuela, works at a local diner, and stalwartly harbors a dangerous secret that has troubled her family for two generations. Enter Nessa, Mags's warm and effervescent childhood friend who has unexpectedly returned to SoCal for the first time since her sudden departure ten years before, ready to reconnect. As the two rekindle their easy friendship—and start a romance—they unearth memories from their past of a boy's decade-old accidental death and its cause, which is caged in Mags's basement to protect everyone—except Mags herself. But if she wants to grieve the past and grow into her most authentic self, the confinement cannot hold. Majority grayscale illustrations depict Mags's present while flashbacks are rendered in unbridled color. Pairing measured pacing, dynamic paneling, robust dialogue, and abundantly realized main and supporting characters, Ostertag (The Girl from the Sea) delivers an expansive triumph—her best yet—to examine issues of grief, identity, intergenerational trauma, and reconnection. Includes an author's note that shares how "making this book changed for the better." Ages 14–up.