The Stars at Oktober Bend

By: Glenda Millard
Location: FIC MIL
Genre: Contemporary - romance

for some
twelve is a nice number
but i
am alice
fifteen times
over

A powerful, captivating story about Alice, who is reaching out to express herself through her beautiful-broken words, and Manny who is running to escape his past. When they meet they find the tender beginnings of love and healing.

Alice is fifteen, with hair as red as fire and skin as pale as bone, but something inside her is broken. She has acquired brain injury, the result of an assault, and her words come out slow and slurred. But when she writes, heartwords fly from her pen. She writes poems to express the words she can't say and leaves them in unexpected places around the town.

Manny was once a child soldier. He is sixteen and has lost all his family. He appears to be adapting to his new life in this country, where there is comfort and safety, but at night he runs, barefoot, to escape the memory of his past. When he first sees Alice, she is sitting on the rusty roof of her river-house, looking like a carving on an old-fashioned ship sailing through the stars.

"I loved the character of Alice, and found her voice in her poetry very compelling. Joey her brother was a stunning character, protective and loving, and Manny's back story about Sierra Leone was heart breaking. This is a gut wrenching but ultimately uplifting read." Pat