EVERYTHING'S NOT FINE

High school senior Rose Hemmersbach’s life is occupied by shifts at Walmart, looking after her three younger siblings, and healing from a freshly broken heart. Rose dreams of the day she can leave the mundanity of rural Sparta, Wisconsin, to attend art school. But then she discovers her heroin-addicted mother overdosed on the kitchen floor and her life spirals out of control with feelings of guilt and helplessness as she begins to suffer from artist’s block; that which used to bring life to her days no longer sustains her. The family, already teetering on the edge of poverty, is evicted, and her parents are being investigated by child protective services. Rose blames herself for everything. Can she box up the thoughts of things she can’t control and focus solely on what she can? Rose’s first-person narration is a roller coaster of believable emotions and inner conflict: Feelings of love for her mother and the desire to have her back home get twisted up in her anger and the desire for Mom to stay away. Rose, whose artistic hero is Frida Kahlo, describes the world in colors; she doesn’t see red, blue, and brown, but alizarin crimson, phthalo blue, and burnt umber. Rose’s art partner and possible new love, Rafa, is Mexican American; assume whiteness for everyone else.

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