“I closed the crawl space door. I got to my feet and brushed myself off. My chest was tight, but I looked at the blue sky, clear and pale above the tree line, and said out loud, ‘Fine, I’ll do it.’ I would speak for Patrick. I’d look straight into the ugliness and find out who hurt him, and when I did, I’d yell it from the mountaintop.”
Patrick Truman was brutalized: beaten with a baseball bat, tied up, and abandoned with the nozzle of a gas pump in his mouth. He lies unconscious in a North Carolina hospital, and police are treating his case as a hate crime, due in part to the slurs left scrawled on his chest in blood. When it looks like the blame is going to be pinned on a drunken truckload of out-of-towners, Cat takes matters into her own hands. She, for one, isn’t so sure; she suspects one of the local “redneck posse” is behind the crime. Either way, she is determined to bring justice to her friend, and begins probing the town of Black Creek for its secrets.
It isn’t very often that I find a book that makes me cry on the subway, but this one certainly did it. Lauren Myracle gives us a southern small town simmering with tension, secrets, and fierce family loyalties. There is poverty; meth and alcoholism contribute to the futureless drifting of the town’s youth, but there are also deep wells of grace and redemption. Furthermore, it’s a darn good mystery, something that I think is all too rare in the young adult literary world. Better still, Myracle does not (this is not really a spoiler, I promise) just end the book with “oh, it was the drunk rednecks who did it”. She could have, of course, but it would be doing something similar to anyone who has ever attributed the actions of an individual to that of a broader group. In short, she doesn’t bend to prejudice.
So we have sixteen-year-old Cat, a broken, bleeding Patrick, and a mess of lies and a whole town of people who are short on hope, in the hands of a very gifted storyteller. This is my final conference book, and I chose it because 1) It is a mystery and 2) Patrick has been out for ages, and there are those who accept and love him, and those who do not. That’s pretty much how it goes down when a person comes out. I have to say, this book was one of the hardest I’ve ever read, but also one of the ones that I feel needs to be read, not just by queer teens, but by everyone.
Happy Reading! (All right, so there are parts in it that will probably make you happy, but also some parts that might make you want to throw up, but I promise, it’s worth it.)
Author’s website: http://www.laurenmyracle.com/
Myracle, Lauren. Shine. New York: Abrams, 2011. 359 pp. Ages 16 and up. (If you’re using this for a classroom, be prepared to defend this book; the language is pretty rough and there’s drug abuse, violence, and a brief instance of sexual abuse. That said, I think it is absolutely worth the attempt.)
If you liked this book, you might want to try Sprout by Dale Peck, or The Christopher Killer by Alane Ferguson.
Also, you might have noticed I listed this book as a National Book Award finalist; and it was, for two days. The awards committee messed up royally, offered Myracle the award, and then said they made a mistake. She handled the fiasco with grace, and I’m including the tag as a sign of respect.
A Better World through Books 