cover image TAF

TAF

Annie Callan, . . Cricket/Marcato, $17.95 (256pp) ISBN 978-0-8126-4933-8

Poet Callan's (The Back Door) coming-of-age tale, her first novel for children, is as lyrically beautiful and untamed as the West of which she writes. Taffy Stetson, nearly 13, lives in 1915 Idaho with her mother and abusive stepfather. She accidentally drops her little brother one day and, thinking she's killed him, runs away in pursuit of her real father who abandoned them for Oregon. She meets up with a cast of intriguing characters, and eventually washes up in Pendleton, where she falls in love with a half-Chinese, half–Nez Perce artisan. Here the story loses some of its focus in a tangle of subplots: another suitor emerges, Taf's sexuality awakens, she debuts with a musical trio and accepts a stint as caretaker for the daughters of a mentally unbalanced woman, among other things. Ultimately, Taf abandons her quest for her father, having found something far more important instead—her self. Despite its structural flaws, the narrative is magical, filled with wildly poetic images ("a long fork of sorrow raked through my body"; "she melted into herself like hot snow") that flow as effortlessly as a refrain through one of the Scottish ballads Taf learned from her father. So, too, does Taf's own voice, tender, irreverent and battered by life, but resilient to the end. If the book is overambitious, the music of this immensely talented writer's prose resonates long after the final page is turned. Ages 12-up. (Nov.)