“How to keep a fire burning. How to stitch a fight up until it’s only a scar. That’s the kind of thing you learn with a mother like mine. Mostly though, you learn how to be loved without proof.”  

This is what 17 year old Margot Nielson thinks of her own mother. And the other very important thing she has learned is never to ask about her own history. She and her mother live alone and isolated from any other family members, and Margot is beginning to question why. When she comes upon an old family Bible with a photo in it, her journey to find her own past begins.

Upon the photo was the name of her family farm- Fairhaven- and a phone number. When she calls the number, she finds that her grandmother has been waiting for her to call for years, hoping to hear from her. But her mother FREAKS and forbids her from seeing or speaking to her.

So what’s a teenager to do? Run away of course! Margot heads out to find her Gram in Phalene, which turns out to be not far away. The day she arrives, she meets some local teens who recognize her immediately as a member of the Nielson family and tell her when a fire has broken out on her family land. When they arrive, Margot finds a young woman dead in the corn fields, a woman who looks so much like her they could be sisters. But could they be?

As Margot’s family history unfolds, she learns about their connection to the land, to the corn, and to eachother. Family secrets come to light, and they are horrifying.

I read this book in one day, hardly wanting to put it down. The story was just so compelling to me, and so very weird! Now I will note that I always judge YA fiction a little bit differently than I do adult fiction- I feel that story is far more important for it. And I also try to keep in mind that I am not exactly the target audience, given that I am 45 years old! 🙂 There were aspects of this story that you could see a little ahead of time, but maybe not if you were 14 or 15. And I was actually surprised by some of it. I understood that there was going to be a deep connection between the crops and the family, I just didn’t realize exactly how deep. 

I also enjoyed Margot as a character; watching her try to find some sort of individuality where there was little to be found was fascinating. I have been enjoying the move towards queerness in YA literature often being a very small thing. The same way it is in many heterosexual stories. As if being gay was only one part of who a person is (imagine that!); I think that is so important because it makes it all that more “normal,” and it’s just as important as the stories that focus on it.

I should also add that I also loved this story just because of the CORN! I have an odd fascination with corn, and a huge collection of corny items, and this book with all it’s weird corn imagery was just my style.

I gave this strange little book 4 stars! I wish some of the other characters besides Margot had been given more fleshing out, and the same with her relationships with those characters. But all in all, I really enjoyed this read.