Description
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