I don’t know how much of who we are is determined by genetics, and how much is from the environment, but I enjoy using characters and stories to explore the question. My scientific and medical background allows me to pull from my training, clinical patients, and scientific studies to create stories that explore characters who are at the precipice of a problem and need to fight against their inner beliefs to learn who they truly are. It’s like a chess game, moving the pieces around the board to see which side will win!
I love reading about young characters facing hard choices.
For a senior in high school, there may be no harder choice than staying in a town with no future to be with a dying grandfather, or leaving home with a best friend in the pursuit of a better life.
I love how Jeff Zentner's characters grow on the page, struggling between their family obligations, friends' influence, and desire to succeed while finding their own identity.
Ohh yeah, and there is some serendipitous science going on also!
I've always loved when the light finds the broken spots in the world and makes them beautiful . . .
Cash's life in his small Tennessee town is hard. He lost his mom to an opioid addiction and his grandfather's illness is getting worse. His smart but troubled best friend, Delaney, is his only salvation. But Delaney is meant for greater things, and she finds a way for Cash to leave with her. Will abandoning his old life be the thing that finally breaks Cash, or will it be the making of him?
I love Glasgow’s exploration of identity while dealing with some very tough issues, such as substance abuse and the death of a friend.
At the beginning of the novel, the features for each character seem set in stone. There’s the popular girl, the stoner, and the influential parents. The protagonist, Emory, tries to create her own image while learning who her friends and family really are.
But what I think really sets this story apart is how each character is so relatable. I can identify with all of them while they struggle to see themselves for the first time.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Pieces comes a stunning novel that Vanity Fair calls “impossibly moving” and “suffused with light”. In this raw, deeply personal story, a teenaged girl struggles to find herself amidst the fallout of her brother's addiction in a town ravaged by the opioid crisis.
For all of Emory's life she's been told who she is. In town she's the rich one--the great-great-granddaughter of the mill's founder. At school she's hot Maddie Ward's younger sister. And at home, she's the good one, her stoner older brother Joey's babysitter. Everything was turned on…
Everyday Medical Miracles
by
Joseph S. Sanfilippo (editor),
Frontiers of Women from the healthcare perspective. A compilation of 60 true short stories written by an extensive array of healthcare providers, physicians, and advanced practice providers.
All designed to give you, the reader, a glimpse into the day-to-day activities of all of us who provide your health care. Come…
This book didn’t win as many critically acclaimed awards as others on my list, but I love how TE Carter shows how, as members of society, we make so many assumptions about people based on their actions. It’s a bias that never disappears, and the main character knows it.
But most importantly, this novel questions whether anyone can truly heal after tragedy. Of course, bad things happen to everyone, but I think the scars from a heart-wrenching catastrophe never mend.
I love the title, and the story takes off immediately after.
Three siblings, all put up for adoption, who have different families and meet for the first time as teenagers. I love how Benway explores the importance of blood relatives and how, most times, a found family may be more important.
But it’s the characters of this novel that are the true stars. They are emotionally raw and, at times, heartbreaking individuals who learn about who they are.
WINNER OF THE U.S. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2017 FOR YOUNG PEOPLE'S LITERATURE!
'Sometimes, family hurts each other. But after that's done you bandage each other up, and you move on. Together. So you can go and think that you're some lone wolf, but you're not. You've got us now, like it or not, and we've got you.'
When 16 year-old Grace gives up her baby for adoption, she decides that the time has come to find out more about her own biological mother. Although her biological mum proves elusive, her search leads her to two half-siblings she never knew existed.…
What happens to aid projects after the money is spent? Or the people and communities once the media spotlight has left?
No Dancing, No Dancing follows the return journey of a former aid worker back to the site of three major humanitarian crises—South Sudan, Iraq and East Timor—in search of…
This novel took much of America by storm, and I am no different.
I love the voice of Demon Copperhead, which bleeds from the Appalachian Mountains. He has endured more trauma over his early years than most people do in several lifetimes. I think what’s most endearing about this novel is that it is sadly believable. Demon is a boy whose local environment has doomed him before he took his first breath. He’s the kind of boy who is just hoping for a break, and as the reader, all I wanted to do was adopt him and give him a good home.
And of course, it did win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, so that probably means something!
Demon's story begins with his traumatic birth to a single mother in a single-wide trailer, looking 'like a little blue prizefighter.' For the life ahead of him he would need all of that fighting spirit, along with buckets of charm, a quick wit, and some unexpected talents, legal and otherwise.
In the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, poverty isn't an idea, it's as natural as the grass grows. For a generation growing up in this world, at the heart of the modern opioid crisis, addiction isn't an abstraction, it's neighbours, parents, and friends. 'Family' could mean love, or reluctant foster…
Nothing ends in a tie; one side has to win. This is the recurring thought for sixteen-year-old Ethan Rivers. Ethan is a chimera: the real but rare in-utero fusion of fraternal twins into a single child.
But Ethan is Split; the physical traits on his left side resemble his father's, and the characteristics on his right mirror his mother's. When Ethan’s father becomes increasingly violent, Ethan struggles to understand the importance of his unique diagnosis and whether he is doomed to behave like his father.
The Drum Tree explores an Earth equivalent world at the cusp of ecological and economic uncertainty through the discoveries and explorations of four exceptional teens and their families.
In this book, you will meet Delan—a drummer and forest wanderer, Hali—a dancer and free spirit, and Jase—a blacksmith and martial artist.…
You’re grieving, you’re falling in love and you’re skint. On top of it all, Europe’s going to Hell in a handcart. Things can’t get any worse, can they?
London, 1938. William is grieving over his former teacher and mentor, killed fighting for the Republicans in Spain. As Europe slides towards…
