Heather Henson was born and raised in Kentucky and later moved to New York City, where she studied creative writing at the New School University and at City College/City University of New York. She has worked as an editor of books for young readers and as a freelance writer. Her short stories have appeared in the literary journal Promethean. She now lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and son. This is her first novel.
Grade 10 Up-Almost 18 and about to graduate from her small-town Kentucky high school, Lu McClellan wastes her days and nights avoiding her father and using alcohol and drugs to numb the pain she still feels over her mother's sudden death when she was a child. Her best friend and drinking partner, Ginny, has no trouble with liquor-store clerks in the next county, at the end of the winding road that local kids habitually travel at dangerously high speeds. Lu is a "camerahead," always photographing the faces, postures, and scenes in which she finds herself, no matter how ubiquitous within her life. She and Ginny run in a crowd of kids with world outlooks that seem to stretch no further than attendance at the University of Kentucky after graduation. Lu's decade-older brother, a musician, has his own friends but watches over his sister and isn't pleased when his buddy Jay takes a romantic interest in her. Lu dreams of leaving town to go out west or maybe to New York. As their relationship becomes a sexual one, she thinks she can convince Jay to leave with her. Then Ginny dies in a car crash, forcing not only Lu, who feels she should have been with her friend, but also her father and Jay from the cocoons of selfishness each has built. Written in blunt and contemporarily savvy prose, this portrait of a girl on the brink of emerging from her past will have immediate appeal to many of her peers.
Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA
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