Edges

Gr 9 Up—After the death of his mother, Luke's father returns to alcohol after a long sobriety and is fast losing control of his life. Frustrated with having to take care of Frank and dealing with his own grief, 17-year-old Luke flees New York for Moab, UT, where he and his parents took frequent trips. He finds a job at the Moonflower youth hostel and lives among the travelers and free spirits. Ava, a student at Barnard, is learning to come to terms with her own alcoholism in an AA program that Frank attends. She hasn't spoken to her parents since they sold her childhood home in Ohio to buy the Moonflower. After Ava saves Frank's life, the two of them, along with their friend Charlie, decide to go to Utah. The story is told in Luke's and Ava's alternating points of view and broken into sections spanning five days of their lives, starting on a Friday and ending roughly a week later. In that time, the teens search for a higher meaning in life in the red rock, spires, and canyons of the area and the tenets of the AA 12-step program. The serendipitous connection between Luke and Ava, apparent early on in the book, will require readers to stretch belief. The device produces mixed results as the convergence of the characters is rushed at the end of the book and the magical realism thread as explanation doesn't satisfy. Nevertheless, the teen characters are well defined, particularly Ava, and the author deftly evokes a mystical Moab setting.—Shawna Sherman, Hayward Public Library, CA