To Come and Go Like Magic

Told in beautifully crafted vignettes, Fawcett's debut is a story of smalltown Appalachian life in the 1970s and finding the courage to leave home. Twelve-year-old Chili Sue Mahoney feels suffocated by her one-road hometown of Mercy Hill, Ky., living alongside mountain people, VISTA workers, and “welfares.” Adding to her claustrophobia: her pregnant sister, Myra, and her Uncle Lu, whose mind “comes and goes like the wind,” have moved in after being left by their spouses. Reading is Chili's main escape until a substitute teacher, Miss Matlock, fills her mind with visions of world travel. The more time Chili spends with Miss Matlock (a stark contrast to time spent with her pragmatic family and her destitute friend, Willie), the more Chili yearns to be someone else, living somewhere else. Chili's first-person narrative stretches from poetic thoughts (“I wish the black night could alight like a moth and carry me away on its silent wings”) to more down-to-earth observations. Her insights are absorbing and her setbacks heartbreaking, as she weighs the only home she's ever known against the possibilities that loom farther afield. Ages 10–up. (Feb.)