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Village Books
AmazonSugar Birds by Cheryl Grey Bostrom is a heart-pounding coming-of-age story about two heartbroken girls who land at crossroads during one treacherous summer, as one runs to a dangerous forest and the other to a dangerous relationship in the Pacific Northwest.
As the story opens, Aggie, aged 10, and Celia, 16, have something in common: anger at their parents. That anger takes each of them on roads through very dark places – roads from which they barely manage to escape.
Aggie accidentally lights her family home on fire, then watches in horror as firefighters extract her unresponsive parents from the burning structure. She loses herself in the woods, practicing the survival techniques her father taught her, afraid that she caused her parents’ death and certain that she will be sent to jail if she is caught. But the arrest, she soon learns, is the least of her worries, as dangers imperil her survival and as guilt threatens to undo her. She is desperate and in constant danger – not from the searchers who only want to help her, but from being alone in the woods that she has never truly faced without her father’s protection.
Celia is angry with her parents for lying to her about pretty much everything involved with her summer exile to her grandmother’s farm. It’s when she joins the hunt for Aggie that Celia meets autistic savant Burnaby and charismatic, sensual Cabot. As her relationships with both grow, she must choose between the one who can help her understand herself and the one determined to claim her.
Aggie’s story is one of survival, while Celia’s is a more typical story of rebellious adolescence – or so it seems at first. Despite the difference in their ages, Aggie and Celia start from similar places. They have both lost trust in the adults in their lives and don’t know where to turn. Neither is mature enough to deal with the situations facing them.
Both girls are lost – until they come together just in time to save one another.
Readers who like survival stories will love Aggie’s journey, while those who enjoy coming-of-age stories featuring heroines who learn to rescue themselves will resonate with Celia’s path. Bostrom takes her readers gently by the hand and plunges them into an immersive tale straight from page one. Sugar Birds is a powerful coming-of-age story of betrayal and loss, rebellion and anger, friendship, forgiveness and redemption, all woven into a testament to the wondrous natural world.
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