From Publishers Weekly
This amusing, slightly bizarre novel by Kowalski (Eddie's Bastard) puts a supernatural spin on a familiar coming-of-age story. Seventeen-year-old tomboy Haley Bombauer lives with her widowed mother in upstate New York. Though they look much like anyone else, the Bombauer women are actually witches-or at least, Haley's reclusive grandmother is. Her mother has given up the family tradition, and Haley herself never took an interest until she breaks her leg and has to spend a summer recuperating indoors. She becomes so bored that she starts messing around with spells. At the urging of her mother, she moves in with her strict, forbidding grandmother, who teaches Haley the healing arts and some other skills. Though Haley is at first resistant, she gradually comes to embrace her special powers. When the outside world threatens to interfere with this dubious education, the old woman and her cabin vanish into thin air. Haley continues to live in the woods on her own; she eventually makes a partial return to civilization as the town healer, but not before she has an unlikely adventure with drug smugglers and a wild sexual encounter with a neighbor boy. Her exploits as a feral woodswoman are implausible even by the loose standards of this book and make for some comically absurd lines ("Note to self: When menstruating, bury used tampons very deep. Something has been digging them up lately. Something big"). Yet Haley is a winning narrator whose dry sense of humor keeps the celebration of womanhood from getting too syrupy.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Library Journal
Kowalski's new work is not so much a coming-of-age as a coming-of-gender story. On the eve of her 17th birthday, Haley Bombauer falls through the barn roof and breaks her leg-a singular occurrence that changes her life and sets us all on an unusual journey. Early on, tomboy Haley had invented a persona that seemed more true to her nature, stuntman Flash Jackson. Haley's father, her partner in her acts of derring-do, was killed in an explosion of one of his inventions, leaving her alone with her less-than-free-spirited mother. Haley's maternal grandmother lives alone in the woods and is well known as a LEGITHATA (ladies extremely gifted in the healing and telepathic arts). With her leg in a cast, Haley goes to live in the woods to find out about Grandma's healing ways and learns more than she expected to about the beauty and community of nature, its creatures, and her place in the world. Haley is 24 as she narrates this story, but as readers we always feel that it is indeed a teenager-grumpy, ornery, and foul-mouthed-who is leading us through our paces. Somewhat fragmented overall and especially slow going in the woods section until Haley's final revelations, this book is not as compelling as Kowalski's first novel, Eddie's Bastard. Still, it is a solid purchase for public libraries.
Bette-Lee Fox, "Library Journal" Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
