Beulah Land

Gr 10 Up—A heartfelt story offering readers a window into the life of a teenaged lesbian in a contemporary poor Ozark community. In a plot that works hard to include the familial effects of meth cooking, a culture turning a blind but knowing eye from organized dog fighting, and a family fractured by ill-kept secrets, shame, and blame, Vi and her best friend Junior come off as sweet kids who are brave and true. However, like most of the rest of a bulging cast—the local vet, Vi's widowed mother and slightly younger sister, the town's criminal element, and the dishonest sheriff—so many details related to character development and motivations clash from one passage to the next that it's difficult to get a clear sense of anyone as authentic. The feelings described in discrete passages often resonate, but it's stringing these emotions together that reveals an unpolished whole that had compelling potential. The fact of Vi's poverty is stated and restated frequently while trappings that make even that supposed given questionable also abound: the sisters each have phones; the family of three owns multiple vehicles; the house includes an Internet-connected laptop and walls that apparently are thick enough that the sisters can converse at length without their mother overhearing from an adjoining room.