Henry Holt and Company, 2015
The protagonist, Skylar lives in a dusty California named Creek View where so far she’s beaten the odds of being a Creek View girl with a baby, in a mobile home, with no future. In a piddly three months Skylar can escape to fulfill her dreams. She has an art scholarship and is focused on moving. Just as she is about to leave, her mother loses her job and stays in bed all day, kicking off a chain of bad things.
Then she reconnects with Josh, a nineteen-year-old wounded warrior who escaped the only other way possible, joining the military. But Josh loses a leg in Afghanistan, and his jerklike attitude, and is also isolated in evolving ways that only Skylar may understand. They find each other at their seedy place of work, the Paradise Motel which becomes more of a home than his real home. Skylar also works at the motel, but spends her time dreaming about escaping the town.
These pained characters ultimately tell the hopeful tale of swimming against the tide in a tired town and of relationships that are complex and flawed. It’s a heartfelt, complicated, realistic look at love amidst poverty, PTSD, and depression.
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