Everything’s Not Fine

Gr 8 Up–Seventeen-year-old Rose’s dreams of escaping her small Wisconsin town and winning a place at a prestigious art school take a vicious hit when she comes home on the evening before the start of senior year to find her mother passed out and bloody on the floor in the throes of a heroin overdose. Life instantly becomes a desperate juggling act as the need to care for three younger siblings and create a semblance of normalcy to keep the Child Protection Bureau from splitting up the family conflict with the demands of school, her part-time job, and futile attempts to keep the episode secret. Subject to alternating fits of smoldering anger and tearful meltdowns, Rose makes a compelling narrator. Both vulnerable and strong, loving her siblings fiercely and her parents, too, she projects the very image of a withdrawn and hostile teen to the outside world while viewing that world with a painter’s eye for subtle colors and textures. Carlson gives her sturdy allies, notably a social worker who frankly explains what an addicted parent can expect from the justice system and underfunded social services, and Rafa, a hunky new classmate who turns out to be not only a kindred artistic spirit but a loyal, fundamentally decent sort who, by the not exactly sunny but brightening end, has moved beyond friendship to something more.