One Thing Stolen by Beth Kephart

When it's mud season in Maine, I need a literary escape.

The first time I visited Florence, I was a teenager like Nadia Cara, the protagonist of One Thing Stolen by Beth Kephart. This soon to be released young adult novel follows an American family on sabbatical in Italy. Like most of Kephart's literary novels, this book would cross over well to an adult audience.

Nadia isn't sure if she's losing her bearings or her mind in a foreign city. Words are hard to articulate and memories of the past compete with visions of the present. Is the boy with the sunlit hair real? Nadia can't resist the urge to follow Benedetto any more than she can stop herself from stealing beautiful objects. From these stolen things, she weaves artistic nests, which she hides under her bed. She doesn't want to ruin her father's sabbatical.

In this moving story, Beth Kephart gives a lyrical voice to a rare neurological disorder that robs an intelligent teenager of her ability to express herself in coherent words. The reader is taken inside a failing mind and experiences the protagonist's frustrations. The narration is fragmented like verse and integrated with avian imagery. Dialogue lacks quotation marks, and although Nadia's thoughts are intelligible, her speech is harder to understand.

"Long. High. Cool. White. Green. The nave of this church is a huge stone cage of doves and pelicans, angels and eagles. Everything carved. Everything still. The air is cool and unsunned. The wicks in the candles are burning. The pew is hard. The stone birds stretch their wings. I breathe."

The flip side of Nadia's linguistic disability is a new found artistic ability as her damaged brain re-routes. Although Nadia's story is fiction, her disorder is a true illness. This fascinating book offers a profound meditation on the complexity of the brain.

For readers who need clarity and answers, be patient. In the second part, Nadia's best friend, Maggie, takes over the narrative in a lucid voice. Specialists are called to find a cure, and Maggie seeks to return the stolen objects in a reverse treasure hunt. Maggie also searches for the boy, Benedetto, but isn't sure if he's real or not. Nadia's memories sound more like dreams or poetry.

"His lips on mine are fog and birdsong. They are the smell of leather and the raw, quickening of rain. He holds my head with the palm of his hand - all that is broken and hurting."

One This Stolen offers no easy solutions but still leaves the reader with hope. I'd strongly recommend this literary novel to adults and to teenagers who are interested in psychology, art, history and Italy. Kephart does a marvelous job with a difficult topic.

More reviews of Kephart's novels:
Going Over
Small Damages
Dangerous Neighbors & Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent
You Are My Only
Undercover (includes author interview)

Reviewer's Disclosure: Beth Kephart is a blog buddy. Upon my request, I received a free galley from Chronicle Books in exchange for an honest review. There has been some confusion over the release date, but I believe it was pushed to next week. The photos of Maine and Florence are mine.

Going Over by Beth Kephart

Do you remember the fall of the Berlin Wall? In November of 1989 I was at college, majoring in Government, and that was the first time I felt a part of history. It was a day to be remembered, the turning point in decades of icy hostility between democratic and communist nations. By the close of 1990 Germany was reunified. The whole world was changing.

The following year in Moscow, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned, dissolving the Soviet Union into a commonwealth of independent states. My children were born in this new era, one not overshadowed by nightmares of nuclear holocaust. I thought the Cold War was over, and then last month Russia made a grab for Crimea. How will today's youth understand the significance?

Going Over makes Cold War history relevant to twenty-first century teens. Beth Kephart's new young adult novel (released yesterday) transports readers back to 1983 Berlin. In free West Berlin fifteen-year-old Ada has dropped out of school to work at a daycare center. At night the pink-haired girl sprays graffiti art on the concrete wall that separates her from the young man she loves. Armed soldiers and dogs keep guard on the other side.

In communist East Berlin eighteen-year-old Stefan worries that the Stasi secret police are watching him. His grandfather died while trying to escape to freedom, although his body was never recovered. Stefan is training to be a plumber to support his grandmother, all the family that he has left. He aims his grandfather's telescope at the stars, but Ada refocuses it on West Berlin. The young lovers meet only four times a year, when Ada's grandmother visits Stefan's grandmother in East Berlin. Ada tells Stefan that she is tired of waiting for him. If he really loves her, he would risk his life to cross over to the west.

Going Over is much more than a star-crossed love story. It tells the history of a war-severed city, of a turbulent period lost to time. The book is educational without sounding so. The gripping story reads more like a dystopian novel than historical fiction. Kephart drops the reader into Berlin without explanation. (I think the book could benefit from a short historical preface for teens.) The author writes from the perspective of that period in a fresh and immediate teenaged voice. Ada's first person narrative alternates with Stefan's told in the second person, to remind us that this is her story.

Like many teens, Ada is self-centered but she is also capable of great empathy. The most moving part of the book was her fight to save a young Turkish immigrant boy and his battered mother. That part of history was new to me. I also loved Ada's and Stefan's relationships with their grandmothers, who had teamed up to survive the brutalities of the Russian occupation, following World War II, only to be separated by a wall.

Kephart takes the time to develop all her characters, including the secondary ones, and to set the scene. The writing is gorgeous, sensuous and nearly surreal at times:

"The courtyard is blue with the late-night TVs. The air is eggplant and sausage."

"Seeing is silent and it doesn't leave a trace. Seeing is waiting for the sky to lose its turbulence so that you can scope the distance. Seeing brings the far close in and the dark to light."

"There's cold in my eyes and winter in my lungs, and when I call for Savras his name scorches through me. Near the Landwehrkanal the vendor trucks are rutting the snow with their wide wheels, leaving grooves shellacked by the morning sun."

"And I stand with the wind in my bones."

I'd strongly recommend Going Over to readers aged twelve and up who enjoy literary fiction. The 1980's setting and the lyrical style would cross over well to adults too. Beth Kephart is one of my favorite young adult authors and this is one of her best books. The critics agree. The book has earned starred reviews from School Library Review and Booklist. It's a Junior Library Guild selection. I expect it to win awards. The eye-catching cover is a winner too. Going Over made me cry and it made me cheer. I finished the last chapter longing for more.



My reviews of more YA novels by Beth Kephart:

Undercover (includes an author interview)
You Are My Only
Dangerous Neighbors & Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent
Small Damages

Disclosure: author Beth Kephart is a blog buddy. Upon my request, her publisher Chronicle Books sent me a free ARC but did not pay me for this review.

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@Barrie Summy

At Main Point Books with Beth Kephart and Craig Johnson

At Main Point Books with Beth Kephart

Last week I spent a blissful couple of days helping my friend, Cathy Fiebach, who just opened an indie bookstore in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Main Point Books is as warm, smart and sunny as its owner. Since childhood, we've shared a passion for good books. It was her dream to open a bookstore and it was mine to be part of it for a few days. How often do you get to live a fantasy?

My favorite job was matching customers' individual tastes with new books, but the hardest work happens behind the scenes. Main Point Books is open 7 days a week, and Cathy is up at dawn placing orders, organizing author events, cleaning the bathroom and doing paperwork. I filed reams of book packing lists/invoices and learned all about Ingram, a book distributer. Empty shelf space indicates recent sales. Cathy's business savvy (a Warton MBA with experience in marketing) is as important as her love of fine literature. Her knowledge, energy and hours are making this bookstore a success. It helps to have such a welcoming and enthusiastic community too. And there's a cupcake store next door!

Many local authors stopped by, and it was a delight to meet (first photo) one of my favorite authors/bloggers, Beth Kephart, in person. I'd asked Cathy to order Beth's two historical YA novels, both set in Philadelphia. Dangerous Neighbors takes place during the Centennial and focuses on twin 16-year-old girls who dare to become involved with boys beneath their social class. Through extensive research, attention to detail and a fine ear for period dialect, Beth brings the past to the present. Dangerous Neighbors is a perfectly crafted novel; it's as tight as a short story with prose as lyrical as poetry:

"Then she steps through the hall and toward the front door, the whisper of her black skirt fading to silence." 

"Katherine saw how his eyes were like pieces of dark green-brown glass, shining and absorbing shine at the same time. She wondered if he'd seen her, then wondered why she cared..."

Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent  (impossible title to remember!) is a companion novel to Dangerous Neighbors. The protagonist is William, the boy with the "green-brown glass" eyes, who rescues lost animals in shantytown. My favorite character was a young goat (I love animals.) DRSR is a Dickensian story with a touch of Steinbeck's Cannary Row and gorgeous illustrations by William Sulit, Beth's talented husband. It's a younger and more masculine story, which I'd recommend to middle school boys and to fans of Dangerous Neighbors who miss the characters. The twins and their feminist/suffragette mother make a few appearances. Locals will be pleased to hear that Beth Kephart is planning a Main Point Books author visit.

Bestseller author Craig Johnson added an unscheduled stop to his book tour while visiting his daughter, who lives near Main Point Books. His Longmire mysteries have become a televised series, and his fans (men and women) came eagerly to hear him speak. Craig showed up in a 10-gallon hat, weathered jeans and cowboy boots, looking like he'd hitched his horse to the parking meter. He spoke eloquently about writing and shared many humorous anecdotes. His aim is to make the reader feel like he/she is sitting beside him on a barstool, not reading a book. Although western mystery is not my genre, I bought The Cold Dish, the first book in the series. Authors take note: you don't need to read your book out loud to gain a new reader, not if the story behind the story is equally interesting. Craig promised to return to Main Point Books - don't miss him.

Author Craig Johnson with Cathy Fiebach, owner of Main Point Books

It was hard to leave Main Point Books, my ideal bookstore. There's a cozy children's corner by the local author section. The big Young Adult section is beside Adult Fiction, making it easier for teens and for adults to crossover. We talked about renaming the Romance section New Adult. Nearly half the stock is non-fiction or memoir. Coming soon will be bookshelf blurbs from store employees and reviewers like me. I shall stay involved, even at a distance.

Follow Main Point Books on twitter for updates.

Reviewer's Disclosure: at my insistence, I was not compensated for my work in the bookstore (beyond food!) or for my reviews. I bought the three paperback books at Main Point Books. Dangerous Neighbors was edited by and dedicated to my new agent (before she shifted to agenting.) My online friendship with Beth stems from my appreciation of her blog and her books. Seems like a theme in my life...

Thank you, followers! Your encouraging comments on my last post helped. Revisions are nearly finished. There will be a final round of polishing once I get feedback from my agent, who is reading again. I haven't missed much summer. It's been raining in Maine for so many weeks on end that I've lost count. Mushrooms are springing up instead of wildflowers in our lawn. I even found one growing in the kids' bathroom (our 1920's home lacks central air conditioning.) When I went to print my manuscript, the paper kept curling up. I had to open a new pack of paper to keep the printer from jamming. This morning the rain has paused, but the trees are hiding in fog. This is my fault for mocking Seattle in my last review. I'm looking forward to catching up on your blogs soon. I've missed you too!

Small Damages by Beth Kephart

When Beth Kephart mentioned that her latest novel was set in Seville, I knew I had to read it. I visited Spain as a child and was entranced. I recall late, spicy dinners tuned to strumming guitars and the swishing skirts of flamenco dancers. In high school I was a foreign exchange student myself but in France. After reading two other young adult novels by Beth, I guessed that her lyrical, thoughtful writing would capture the experience of living abroad and this was so:

"Outside in the courtyard, I hear the Gypsies settling in - someone laughing, someone pulling out the drum, someone making rasgueado and turning around the sound, and when I look through the open door to the earth beyond, I see Rafael stomping at the dust at his feet and the dust rising like fog."

In Small Damages a pregnant American teenager is shipped off to Spain, where a couple is waiting to adopt her child. Keeping the baby would derail Kenzie's college plans and her nascent career in filmmaking. No one, other than her mortified mother and her Yale-bound boyfriend, needs to know of her misstep. Her cover is that she is learning how to cook Spanish food and improving her language skills. In Spain, however, Kenzie realizes there are more choices to make.

The backstory unfolds slowly in shuffled flashbacks while exploring Seville and working on a remote bull ranch. This exotic setting is peopled with multidimensional characters who are distinctly Spanish. Shy and modest Esteban isn't a typical romantic hero, and Estela, the cook with a past, hides her generosity behind a gruff exterior. As the gypsies come and go, their music lingers. This book engages all the senses so that the reader is there in the moment with the protagonist.

Kenzie is self-absorbed at first, but that's understandable given her difficult situation. Her mother's insistence on hiding the accidental pregnancy seems rather anachronistic. Her boyfriend refuses to see this as his problem too. Both her mother and her boyfriend had suggested abortion, but Kenzie had refused. Still grieving the death of her father, she sees the fetus as a link to him. The narrative dutifully follows the convention of young adult literature by side-stepping abortion. In this novel, choice is not political, religious or even moral; it's a personal decision. 

I'd recommend Small Damages to mature teenagers and to adults who enjoy literary fiction. It will be released tomorrow on July 19, 2012. Simmering with secrets, savory flavor and dusty heat, this book is seasoned just right for summer.

The book trailer features the author's talented husband on guitar
and her gorgeous photos of Spain.

Small Damages received starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly.
It was also reviewed in the NYT Books section last weekend.
Congratulations, Beth!

Disclosure: Author Beth Kephart is a blog buddy.
I received a free ARC from the publisher on my request.
My reviews of two more Kephart novels are here:
Undercover by Beth Kephart (review and interview)
You are My Only by Beth Kephart (review)

You Are My Only by Beth Kephart

I love quirky books that are hard to categorize. You Are My Only by Beth Kephart is marketed as young adult fiction, but it could just as easily be adult literary fiction. It's a contemporary novel that echoes the language of classic literature.  Many lines read like poetry. The alternating chapters follow a young woman and a teenaged girl, each one confined to a miserable existence. The connection between Emmy and Sophie is a mystery for the reader to solve.

Sophie is a precocious 14-year-old imprisoned in a series of rental houses. While her mother works as a waitress, Sophie is left home alone to educate herself and not allowed contact with the outside world. Because classic books are her only companions, Sophie sounds like a child from another era. She reminded me of attic-bound Sara in The Little Princess. Quietly rebellious Sophie forms a secret friendship with the cute guy next door and his elderly aunts. This engaging storyline was a delight to read, despite the creepy undertones of the confinement.

Emmy married straight out of high school to an abusive man. Her only passion is her baby. After her daughter is kidnapped, Emmy has a nervous breakdown that leads to her institutionalization. Her narrative reads like a wink to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and deviates from the central plot. I would have liked to have known more about Emmy and less about her eccentric roommate. Emmy's emotional trauma scrambles her ability to communicate so she remains enigmatic.

Kephart does a fine job in weaving the two narratives together with parallel themes and crossover clues.  Each story is enhanced by the other in this well-crafted book. The un-rushed pace allows the reader to appreciate the beautiful writing. You Are My Only sparkles with whimsical prose:

Emmy: “The sun has come up like a squint on the horizon.”

Sophie: “Johannes Kepler was born with the skies in his eyes.”

The atmosphere is a character in itself, reflecting the narrator’s state of mind:

Panicked Emmy searches for her lost baby: “The neighborhood changes – from house to retail, from window light and TV flicker to lanterns above. At the gas station, the pumps are still. At the Clock and Watch, the gutter is splash. Maybe they’re hiding Baby in the shadows between places, in the dark behind bushes, on the other side of barrel trash cans.”

Sophie watches the world from the attic: “My house is a storybook house. A huff-and-a-puff-and-they’ll-blow-it-down house. The roof is soft; it’s tumbled. There are bushes growing tall past the sills. A single sprouted tree leans in from high above the cracked slate path, torpedoing acorns to the ground.”

Don’t you want to keep reading? You don't have long to wait. You Are My Only will be released on October 25, 2011.

Disclosure: I received an ARC from the publisher at my request. I’ve gotten to know the author online after interviewing her. You can check out her blog in my sidebar.

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@Barrie Summy

Undercover by Beth Kephart: review & interview

Have you ever read a novel that felt like coming home? Undercover by Beth Kephart is set in Pennsylvania, but with the turning leaves, wild animals and pond skating, it could have been Maine.

My favorite place to skate is on our friend’s island in Harpswell. A stonewall separates the freshwater pond from the sea.

I’ve rested on the wall with my face turned to the sun, listening to the crash of waves and marveling at how my children zip confidently across the bumpy pond ice.

We all have our unsteady moments, but there are none in Beth’s first young adult novel. Undercover is literary fiction for discerning teenagers:

“… the sky was poked to bits with the nakedness of trees. The color of the day was the color of a storm that had chosen not to come.”

The story unfolds slowly with sensitivity and grace. Elisa is a lonely, unattractive girl with a knack for beautiful metaphors. Like Cyrano de Bergerac, she crafts love poems for the boys to woo the pretty girls at her school. Elisa collects feathers and images in the woods, capturing them in verse like fallen leaves under ice. She teaches herself to figure skate on a secluded pond.

Complications arise when Elisa is attracted to her latest client. Theo is in her honors English class, where they are reading the play Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand. Theo secretly befriends Elisa as they skate under the stars. His jealous girlfriend vows revenge. Shy Elisa must find the self-confidence to fight back:

“… the greatest tragedy of all is letting invisibility win. It’s choosing to give up the thing you want because you think you don’t deserve it.”

My only criticism was that I didn’t understand how an unusual girl like Elisa would fall for a conventional boy like Theo. Still, I could relate to her desire for love and for friendship. I was sad to reach the final page and found myself longing for the woods where foxes dance in the moonlight.

I loved how the themes of Cyrano de Bergerac echoed in Undercover. I’ve tried to do something similar with my young adult novel, as u like it, and Shakespeare’s play. This writer seems to share my sensibility, which is another reason I felt at home in the narrative. I connected with Beth through Cynthia Pittmann@Oasis Writing Link’s post that mentioned our writing for teens. Thank you, Cynthia!

Beth has two other young adult novels: The House of Dance and Nothing but Ghosts. Her fourth YA novel, The Heart is not a Size, is set in a border city of Mexico and will be released on March 30th, 2010. You can read more about Beth's books on her blog (my review is featured today.)

My Interview of Beth Kephart

author photo by Mike Matthews

Sarah: Who are your favorite young adult authors?

Beth: My very favorite young adult book is The Book Thief, which is original and deeply moving and artful and all that I look for in any kind of book. I’m also a huge believer in books that cut across categories, and time, so that I want every young adult out there to read, for example, To Kill a Mockingbird, though I’m not sure it was labeled YA upon its release, as well as Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor was Divine, which was published as an adult novel but certainly, certainly features younger protagonists and important issues and graceful writing. I also love, and would love every teen and parent to read, Marilyn Nelson’s Carver—a book of poems that tell the story of botanist and educator George Washington Carver.

Sarah: As a poet, non-fiction and memoir author, what made you decide to write a young adult novel?

Beth: I was actually asked to write YA by Laura Geringer, who was first at Harper and is now working with Egmont, who had read some of my nonfiction and who knew that I had taught young writers for years. I had also chaired the National Book Awards’ Young People’s Literature Jury in 2001 and made my thoughts about what YA might be quite clear.

Sarah: How autobiographical was Undercover?

Beth: Undercover is emotionally true, and, in many ways, factually resonant. I went to Radnor High School, as Elisa does. I was a young poet who benefited from the encouragement of an English teacher. I was often asked by the popular guys for advice about winning over the girls they actually loved, and sometimes I was bruised by that, but didn’t show it. I also learned to ice skate on a pond in Boston, and ultimately I excelled at the type of competition in which Elisa skates at the end. My mother was a seamstress, and my final competition dress was very much like the one I describe in the book. Finally, I run a consulting business; my first business was called Point of View, which is the name of the firm I created for Elisa’s dad.

 Beth Kephart at age seventeen, family photo

Sarah: What elements are key in writing for teenagers as opposed to writing for an adult audience?

Beth: The story has to move more quickly. The scenes, in some ways, must be more intense. The characters must be immersed in situations that matter enormously to teens. That said, the teens I know and interact with on my blog are hugely intelligent, their vocabularies sometimes outpace mine, and they tend to embrace books of linguistic or thematic complexity. I write my heart out when I write for teens. I don’t keep anything off the page.

Sarah: What’s the best writing advice you have received?

Beth: My degree from Penn is in the History and Sociology of Science, and I didn’t take any writing courses as an undergrad. I went to three writing workshops later in life, one conducted in Spoleto by Rosellen Brown and Reginald Gibbons, one in Prague with Jayne Anne Phillips, and one at Bread Loaf, again with Jayne Anne. I’ve been blessed to have some truly extraordinary editors—Alane Mason and Laura Geringer—and from them I’ve learned quite a bit. Through it all, one thing stands out: Give yourself and your stories room to breathe.

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@Barrie Summy

Publishing Industry Watch:

"Math of Publishing Meets the E-Book" (NYT, 3/1/10, business section) compared the costs of publishing books vs. e-books and showed how profit is shared among publishers, authors and booksellers.

"The Editorial Role: An Agent's View" (The Huffington Post 3/2/10) Jean Naggar (my agent) describes the changing role of agents as editors lack the time and support to edit manuscripts.