About this item
In this lyrical, heartwrenching story about a forbidden first love, a teen seeks the courage to care for another girl despite her small town's bigotry and her father's violent threats.Growing up in conservative small-town New Mexico, fifteen-year-old Mara was never given the choice to be different. Her parents - an abusive, close-minded father and a detached alcoholic mother - raised Mara to be like all the other girls in Barnaby: God-fearing, churchgoing, and straight. Mara wants nothing to do with any of it. She feels most at home with her best friend and older brother, Iggy, but Iggy hasn't been the same since their father beat him and put him in the hospital with a concussion. As Mara's mother feeds her denial with bourbon and Iggy struggles with his own demons, Mara finds an escape with her classmate Xylia. A San Francisco transplant, Xylia is everything Mara dreams of being: free-spirited, open, wild. The closer Mara and Xylia become, the more Mara feels for her - even though their growing relationship is very much forbidden in Barnaby. Just as Mara begins to live a life she's only imagined, the girls' secret is threatened with exposure and Mara's world is thrown into chaos. Mara knows she can't live without Xylia, but can she live with an entire town who believes she is an abomination worse than the gravest sin?
About the Author
Tawni Waters is a writer, actor, college teacher, and gypsy. Her debut novel, Beauty of the Broken, was released by Simon & Schuster in 2014. In addition to winning the prestigious International Literacy Association's Award for Young Adult Literature, it won the Housatonic Book Award, was named an Exceptional Book of 2015 by the Children's Book Council, was shortlisted for the Reading the West Book Award, and was included on the Kansas State Reading Circle List. Her poetry book, Siren Song, was released by Burlesque Press in 2014. Her work was featured in Best Travel Writing 2010. Her YA novel, The Long Ride Home, published by Sourcebooks Fire, launched in September, 2017. She teaches workshops and retreats at various universities and conferences throughout the U.S and Mexico. In her spare time she talks to angels, humanely evicts spiders from her floorboards, and plays Magdalene to a minor rock god.www.tawniwaters.com
