Miracle Season

A week after Persephone Pearl Clark’s 12th birthday, her lifeguard older brother Levi sustained a traumatic brain injury in a swimming accident, leaving her family bereft and in substantial medical debt. A year later, she takes small comfort in her incredible ability to make plants grow and bloom, developing what is seen as an increasingly “prickly” attitude and telling a sequence of lies. The biggest is the application she forges in Levi’s name, submitting their small Wisconsin town for consideration on the siblings’ favorite reality show, Small Town Revival, with a goal of covering the family’s bills—and getting her brother further treatment—with the $100,000 prize. As Persephone revitalizes a perhaps magical neighbor’s overgrown garden for the show, tension escalates around her deceptions and Levi’s accident. Thoughtfully exploring the dark aspects of potential reality television fame, and employing nuanced character relationships, a small-town atmosphere, and a prevailing sense of hope, Hautala (The Ostrich and Other Lost Things) traces grief’s complications with refreshing bluntness and honesty (“Sometimes, anger is just sadness wearing a suit of armor”). Most characters read as white. Ages 10—up. Agent: Danielle Chiotti, Upstart Crow Literary. (Aug.)