Max and Menna — Shauna Kelley

"A haunting tale: the story unfolds as seamlessly as a memory, but winds like a complicated, aching, longing dream. Its grasp leaves a mark, the kind you've been left by Faulkner, Peter Taylor, and Alice Sebold, from the repeated flares of perfect written moments within the steady flame of a solid narrative." Meri Robie-Craven, author of What Happened to the Miracle "Max and Menna is a heart-felt, heart-rending story of abandoned children who must learn, as best they can, to care for each oher and themselves." Madison Smartt Bell, the author of twelve novels including All Soul's Rising, a National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and winner of the Anisfield-Wolf award for the best book of 1996 dealing with matters of race. MAX AND MENNA tells the story of two siblings surviving a deplorable home life in the South in the early 1980s. Telling the story from each of their viewpoints, Max and Menna outline their reliance on each other and on Nick, their only friend, as they cope with growing up in poverty, living with an alcoholic mother, and having no indication of the other half of their parentage. The story opens with Max and Menna in the eighth grade. They meet Nick, a Native American, and the story continues to take place during their summer vacations progressively through high school. Max, quiet and introspective, struggles to understand how to be the only man in the house and protect a family that seems determined to destroy itself. Menna is quick-tempered and vivacious, and grows to love and view Nick as a method of coping with a childhood that requires her to be very adult. Despite the strength of the bond the three of them share, however, their environment works against them. As the children of the town drunk, the younger siblings of the town slut, and the friends of an Indian from "over the fence," Max and Menna fight not only to grow up, and get out, but to stay together, and stay safe.