This big deal award winner is one of the strangest books I have read in a very long time. Literary, lyric, metaphorical and symbolic, there is a lot here. So much that I struggle to identify a theme. Was it a page turner? Yes. Could I tell you what it was about? Um, not sure. Set in Bone Gap, Illinois (yes, it is a real place) it has more of an Appalachian feel to it than Midwest. There is a girl, a boy, another girl, another boy. There is a kidnapping of sorts. There are prescient animals and enough magical realism to evoke a sense of "other" rather than here and now. There is pain for many and an undiagnosed illness. There is healing. The timeline is ... fluid. This is just "different" -- but in a good way. Don't read it the way I did, over 30 minute lunch blocks. Sit in a chair by a window and delve in. The world Ms. Ruby has created needs to be digested carefully.
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