Disappeared by Francisco X. Stork

Set in Cuidad Juarez, the largest city in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, Franncisco X. Stork's new novel, Disappeared weaves a nuanced story that brings together several aspects of life in the city including poverty, drugs, corruption, violence and the abduction of young women. The city is situated on the Rio Grande just south of El Paso, Texas and is known for its high rate of violence due to conflicts between the major drug cartels. Young women have been disappearing for years and little is done to recover them because of massive corruption. The story revolves around two main characters; Sara Zapata and her brother Emiliano and covers exactly a one week period beginning Friday March 24 to Friday, March 31 and is told in alternating points of view.

Sara Zapata

Sara Zapata lives in Juarez with her brother Emiliano and their mother. Their father left for the United States in the hopes of making a better living and promising to return. However, two years after he left, he sent divorce papers to Sara and Emiliano's mother, leaving them to struggle financially. Sara works at the newspaper, El Sol where she is a reporter. In January, Sara wrote a column about the disappearance of her best friend Linda Fuentes. Linda was kidnapped in November after leaving her job at a shoe store on Francisco Villa Avenue. In her column, Sara vowed to continue looking for her friend "forever and ever." To help in the effort to find these missing women, called Desaparecidas, Sara has been writing a weekly column profiling one of the hundreds of missing girls of Juarez.

Now on Friday, March 24, Sara finds herself in her boss Felipe's office along with her editor Juana, where she is told that there are to be no more columns on the Desaparecidas. Instead, she is to focus on the positive aspects of the city. Felipe reveals that they have received a threat via email, "If you publish anything of Linda Fuentes we will kill your reporter and her family." When Sara objects, saying the columns ensure the girls are not forgotten, Felipe is insistent. Later Juana tells Sara that this email scares her and that she wants her to follow up on a story about a new mall near Zaragoza.

Sara forwards the email to Ernesto who is one of two IT's working at El Sol, hoping he can determine who sent the email. Ernesto recognizes that the email has been encrypted and sends it to his group of friends who are computer experts, known as Jaqueros.  When she checks in with Ernesto later he tells her that "...the medium is the message...The sender wants us to be aware of his power." Ernesto informs Sara that one of the Jaqueros recognizes the encryption and believes it is connected to the State Police. This greatly concerns Sara because she remembers the lack of sympathy from the police when she accompanied Mrs. Fuentes to report Linda missing and how they do not seem to care about the missing girls.

Despite Ernesto warning her that the further they investigate the greater danger she places herself and her family in, Sara tells him to continue. At 2:45pm when she checks the newspaper hotline, there are no emails. After letting Ernesto know, he calls Sara and states that all the emails have been deleted from Juana's computer. Since Juana doesn't know how to access them this is puzzling. However, Ernesto manages to extract the emails from the cloud and he sends Sara an email containing a photograph of a beautiful young girl with an older man in a nightclub booth. Sara is convinced that this is from Linda because the email has the word "puchi", their code word in the subject line. Sara realizes that this club is where the girls must be being held against their will so she directs Ernesto to see if he can learn the identity of the man while she will check on the girl.

Sara identifies the girl as Erica Renteria while Ernesto and the Jaqueros identify the man in the photograph as Leopoldo Hinojosa, head of the Public Security and Crime Prevention Unit of the State Police. Ernesto advises Sara not to tell anyone including Juana, Felipe or her family. Sara realizes that whomever is threatening her believes she must have something else incriminating but what? That night at a coworker's daughter's Quinceanera, Sara is warned by both Juana and Elias to give up her investigation of the Desaparecidas.

The following morning Sara discovers that a package was sent to her in the mail, which Luis the staff mailman placed on her chair. He tells her the white package looked like it contained a cell phone. Sara confronts Juana who asks her to tell her everything, but remembering Ernesto's warning Sara doesn't reveal much. Unable to locate the cell phone in Elias's office as Juana suggested, Sara turns her attention to a photograph she has of Erica in front of a Mormon church in Juarez. From the Mormon church website, Sara is able to talk to Alberto Mirabiles who is head of the church. She learns from Mr. Mirabile that Erica's brother was severely beaten and that the cell phone that was sent to her came from Erica who sent it to her family via a commercial laundry service. A note with the cell phone indicated that Erica was being held on a ranch near an airport. Mr. Mirabiles tells Sara that the laundry company was La Vaquita.

With this much information Sara knows that to proceed further and contact FBI Agent Alejandro Durand will mean crossing the line between the safety of not doing anything and the danger of acting on her conscience and doing what is right to help the missing girls. As Sara pieces together the information about Linda's disappearance and acts to help her friend, she knows her life will change forever. But will it be enough to save Erica and Linda? And can she save her family too?

Emiliano Zapata

Emiliano Zapata struggled after his father abandoned the family. He began shoplifting small items but eventually was caught stealing an expensive video camera. Brother Patricio intervened, saving him from jail and took Emiliano on a hiking trip to the Sierra Tarahumara. Afterwards he and Brother Patriciano founded the Jiparis, a sort of Boy Scouts group. Now besides attending Colegio Mexico, Emiliano runs his own folk art business where he sells pinatas that his friend Javier makes.

Friday, March 24 is going to be a busy day for Emiliano; he has to pick up the pinatas, then meet Armando Cortazar who wants to talk to him, and later in the evening attend a birthday party for Perla Rubi Esmeralda's mother. Emiliano is in love with Perla, the daughter of a wealthy lawyer but he knows he has almost no chance of ever being her boyfriend due to his social standing.

After picking up the pinatas, Emiliano heads to the Taurus nightclub where he meets Armando and is paid to take Armando's black Mercedes to the repair shop. When he returns, Emiliano is sent to meet Alfredo Reyes who tells him he wants to use his pinatas to ship drugs to the United States. The operation will stay small, only a dozen pinatas which will be stuffed with the "product" then eventually taken to Reyes' stores. This will net Emiliano thirty thousand pesos a week. Emiliano leaves the meeting both stunned and in deep conflict.

That night at Mrs. Esmeralda's birthday party, Emiliano talks with Perla's father. He is overwhelmed at the wealth and opulence of the Esmeralda's home. Mr. Esmeralda reveals that he has connections with both Armando Cortazar's father and that Alfredo Reyes is a business associate. He tells Emiliano that when he was young he worked in a factory and saved to go to law school. At first he was a "good, conscientious, clean lawyer" but in order to "take care of his family" and to grow professionally he had to become involved in the dirty part of life in the city. Emiliano leaves the party in deep distress and conflict. In order to become part of Perla Rubi's life, he must become part of the narcotics trade in Juarez, a choice he knows to be evil. The choice before him is to be honest and continue to struggle to make a living or to "dirty" himself and make a good living for his family.

Discussion

Disappeared is yet another finely crafted novel by Francisco X. Stork. The novel was inspired by two events, the first was the thousands of young women who went missing in Cuidad Juarez over the period of a decade, the second was the recent U.S. presidential election in which anger towards illegal Latino refugees was intense. Set in Mexico, in a city rife with violence as a result of the drug cartels, the two main characters must confront situations that require them to choose between two courses of action; one that is right and one that is wrong, one that is to act, the other that is to do nothing. The defining moment will affect their lives in ways they cannot foresee.

For Sarah Zapata, this comes when she learns about Erica Renteria's efforts to get the cellphone to her. "There is a line in front of her. One more step on behalf of Linda and her life will change forever. How does she decide between safety and the risk that comes from doing what her heart knows to be right?" Sara can choose to do nothing more but that will mean Linda will never be rescued. If she chooses to act on the information she now has, her life and the life of her family will change forever. Agent Durand attempts to explain this to her. But as Sara considers the consequences of acting or not acting, she remembers "The decision to act against evil is not measured by the impact it has on the evil but by the impact it has on the person who acts." For Sara, "The only thing that matters is that she act in accordance with her conscience." There is little interior conflict for Sara; without her help, without her taking risks, her friend Linda will never be found. Her conscience won't let her choose any other course but to act.

For Emiliano Zapata things are more complicated. He has just met with Alfredo Reyes who makes him a shocking offer to be a part of shipping drugs to the US through Javier's piñatas. This sets up an immediate conflict within Emiliano. Reye's proposal represents the chance to make big money, to pay the bills, to make a more comfortable life for his mother and sister and to be with Perla Rubi but it also goes against everything Emiliano has been taught. Brother Patricio who rescued Emiliano from jail has told him that "Success takes hard, slow persistent work..." without shortcuts. He thinks he will refuse Reyes. However, in the overwhelming opulence of the Esmeralda residence, Emiliano's indecision is symbolically demonstrated when holding his mother's cake - a representation of his family's values of honesty and hard work - he hesitates over where to take it. It represents the decision he must make. "Sooner or later he has to do something, take a step in one direction or another." 

Mr. Esmeralda tells Emiliano, "There's no way to be successful in Mexico without getting dirty. The best one can do is control the degree of dirt..." Esmeralda rationalizes the choices to become part of the dirty side of life in order to obtain wealth and prestige, "All I want to do is tell you that...growing up means, unfortunately, expanding our views of what we consider good and bad. Within that larger view, we do what can for our families, we create jobs, we help the less fortunately ... Getting dirty means doing what we have to do for our families and for those around us, given the realities of where we live, in this mess of a life that is good and bad."

Emiliano recognizes that what bothers him is that Esmeralda has told him the only way to be well off is to be a part of something that he knows inside is wrong. This is in contrast to Brother Patricio's advice. "Its those conditions that you hate. The conditions for having a house like Mr. Esmeralda's, for being allowed to be his daughter's boyfriend." Emiliano accepts Esmeralda's view and decides he will accept Reyes's offer telling himself that this will be helping his family. It is Javier who identifies more consequences of Emiliano's decision. To accept means putting Javier, a boy whom Brother Patricio rescued from truancy and addiction back into contact with drugs. It also means going against his Jipari pledge: "I will abstain from all intoxicants. I will be honest with myself and others. I will use the knowledge and strength the desert gives me for the benefit of others." Javier points out that Emiliano's involvement will break all aspects of the pledge, being honest and while it will benefit some, others will be hurt. Javier, although only fourteen shares some of his wisdom with the older Emiliano; that on the surface these people seem good but deep down are not nice and that the hunger for money is like the hunger an addict feels. "And the other thing I know as an addict is that once you get that hunger inside of you, you can't control it. It's impossible...You say we won't get greedy, that we'll stay small. But money is like heroin. Once you get it, you want more..." 

Just as Brother Patricio took Emiliano into the desert to help him after he was caught stealing, Emiliano once again finds his bearings in the desert. He tells Sara that he wants the life the Esmeralda family has for his family but "It's not possible to live without some kind of lying. It can't be done. If you think it's possible, then your fooling yourself." Sara reminds him "But there are conditions to living in that world, aren't there... It's those conditions that are bothering you. It's like it says in the Bible, 'What use is it to gain the whole world if you lose your soul?' " Sara tells him, "You know that you can never be the person those people want you to be."

After being attacked by two men sent by Hinojosa to rape and murder his sister, Emiliano still wants to be part of their world. At this point he still doesn't understand his motivation. It isn't until Emiliano is dying in the desert from an infected foot that he is able to recognize the motivation for his actions - anger towards his father for abandoning them. He is given a second chance to make the right choice after being saved by Gustaf and Lupe. Gustaf tells him about a man in Sanderson asking about undocumented Mexicans, whom he suspects is Emiliano's father. He offers Emiliano the choices before him, "If you want to call him, you can call him. If you want to stay, you can stay. I could use the help around here. Good old hard, honest work. Or go back to Mexico. It's up to you."  Emiliano decides he will call his father to let him know about Sara but his choice remains, "Good old hard, honest work. Or go back to Mexico."

While there are many other themes in the novel, the themes of anger, forgiveness and being the person God means you to be, are deeply interconnected. The anger towards his father is Emiliano's motivation to accept Reyes's offer. In the desert with Brother Patricio, Emiliano learned that "unchanneled anger would destroy him, that anger needed to be converted into courage and determination to overcome the obstacles in life." This is in contrast to what Mr. Esmeralda tells Emiliano about courage, that controlled anger is a type of energy, a gift not to be wasted. But Sara tells Emiliano, "There are better sources of energy. Like love, or wanting to do something with your life. Anger makes you sick. It makes you go after hurtful things, as if hurting yourself is a way to get revenge on the person who hurt you." In the desert, dying, Emiliano comes to understand how his anger towards his father suing for divorce has harmed him. "The anger started then and there, and everyone assumed that in time it would go away, but he made sure it didn't. He kept it alive. That anger turned to wanting more, to be more and better than his father. But he was never better, was he?" Emiliano realizes his father was just trying to be the best person he could be. Of course the best choice for Emiliano's father would have been to remain faithful to his wife, to honor his promise to her and to his son and to have tried to bring them to America. While that did not happen, Emiliano now realizes his father was trying his best.  "The man, his father, a flawed human being like any other, chose to be and do good, as best he could."  

Mami and Sara come to recognize the same struggle in her son when she tells him; "And Emiliano, son, here in Mexico it is too hard for you to be the person God wants you to be." Sara also tells her brother, "I think we are all meant to be the best person we are capable of being. You're right that we need to choose to be that person. But sometimes, circumstances make it hard for us to make the right choice..."

Stork utilizes the image of a spiderweb as a metaphor for the connection between wealth and narcotics in Juarez and Mexico. A spiderweb's function is as a trap for insects. Once ensnared, the insects are doomed. In the same way, Emiliano is facing entrapment in the spiderweb of the drug trade in Juarez in order to better his family's life.  Mr. Esmeralda tells Emiliano that he knows Alfredo Reyes. "This city is like a spiderweb. Every thread is connected directly or indirectly to every other thread. Enrique Cortazar, Alfredo Reyes, myself, we are businessmen."  Esmeralda points out that Colegio Mexico gives out scholarships because of financial aid from businessmen like himself and Cortazar. That he is already part of the web that connects everyone in Juarez to money and drugs. Emiliano learns very quickly how vast the spiderweb really is when he and Sara are tracked through the desert.

Disappeared has been written in an era when there is much anger in the United States over illegal immigrants from Mexico. Stork's novel conveys the real plight of refugees from Mexico; the difficulty in leaving behind one's beloved country with its connections to family, language and culture, and the reality that people often become refugees out of necessity. If given the choice,  most would prefer to live a life of safety and peace in their homeland. In this regard, Disappeared asks young readers to rethink what they hear in the media and to try to understand that Mexican immigrants, legal and illegal are not that much different than Americans.

Stork has crafted an entire cast of complex, realistic characters. Sara Zapata is the true heroine, who never really falters in her choice to do good, but Emiliano is more complex and nuanced. His struggle is more realistic. He has his good qualities such as his devotion to his family and his desire to help others, but also his weaknesses such as his inability to forgive his father. Many of Stork's characters in the novel are similar in this regard as is noted by both Emiliano and Sara. Emiliano thinks, "Or maybe the bad people look more like the good people, he thinks. Armando, Mr. Reyes, Mr. Esmeralda. They don't look like your typical narcos." He finds Lester, the man sent to kill his sister confusing, "It's like seeing evil and some kind of goodness and innocence all rolled into one, inseparable." 

Disappeared is an outstanding novel, well written and timely. This kind of quality writing, characterized by a strong story, well developed characters and rich in thematic elements to explore, is much needed in young adult literature. Definitely another brilliant contribution by Francisco X. Stork.

Book Details:

Disappeared by Francisco X. Stork
New York: Arthur A. Levine Books       2017
326 pp.

This Impossible Light by Lily Myers

This Impossible Light by slam poetry sensation Lily Myers tackles a slew of issues centered on body image, divorce and loneliness.

Fifteen-year-old Ivy Lewis's world is torn apart when her father leaves her mother. She doesn't know if her father left or her mother made him leave. All she knows is that one Sunday in June they decided things were not working. The novel begins three months after Ivy's father has left and Ivy and her mother are like "planets in constant orbit", never really connecting on any level. Her father moved to a modern condo downtown which Ivy has visited twice, the second time finding a photo of his new girlfriend. Since then, Ivy has not returned, instead meeting him for pizza or seeing a movie together with her brother Sky.

Ivy's mother is unable to cope with the divorce. After her father left, Ivy's mother has pulled away, often drinking or staying in her bedroom. Meanwhile Sky has left home to attend cooking school, leaving Ivy alone with her mother and their empty, silent home. Ivy hopes the beginning of the school year will be her salvation. She's going into grade 10 and loves school because it organizes her day, she can reconnect with her best friend Anna and she starts calculus.Ivy loves math with its unchanging numbers and equations with a solution.
"Numbers never decide one day
they are
         just not working...
Numbers keep their promises."

It's at this time that Ivy notices changes in her body; she's bigger, has breasts, her hips are fuller and she's taller. In contrast, Ivy's mother is bony and fragile. Ivy notes that she's grown two inches over the summer. Ivy doesn't want to be six feet tall like her brother and father. She wants to be small and compact so she can be "curled up, safe."

Ivy's plan is to go to a top school to study organic chemistry and advanced calculus and become an engineer. She refers to herself as Smart Girl who makes responsible choices. At school Ivy meets her best friend Anna who's been away all summer in France, living with her mother and taking French. Ivy and Anna's reunion does not go as Ivy anticipated. Instead she finds Anna has a new friend, Raquel whom she met in France. While Anna and Raquel share stories about their time in France, Ivy feels left out. In calculus class, Ivy, the only sophomore in the junior class meets their new teacher, Ms. Fulton.

As the school days pass, Ivy finds herself reminiscing about how her mother and father were before they split up and how good her family life was. Ignored by her mother who is struggling to cope with the breakup of her marriage and her friend Anna, Ivy turns inward focusing on her body. A sleepover with Anna reinforces how much they've grown apart. While Ivy still loves Wicked, Anna has moved on to boys, smoking and drinking. After the sleepover, Ivy goes home to an empty house and ends up biking so she can't think about what's happened to her family and to her and Anna. At home, Ivy orders a pizza and eats all of it. Disgusted with herself, she goes into the bathroom and makes herself vomit it up.

School continues to go well for Ivy as she does the extra math problems Ms. Fulton assigns. Ms. Fulton recognizing Ivy's ability, offers her a chance to apply to the statewide mathematics competition. Ivy is ecstatic because she feels this is the first step in her plan to get away from home. She researches top engineering programs and begins planning how "Smart Girl" can get out like her brother Sky did.

But when her friendship with Anna falls apart and her mother slips deeper into depression, Ivy feels her life slipping out of control. Critical of her changing body she begins exercising and restricting her food intake. At first Ivy finds she can keep up her school work, but soon restricting, purging and counting calories consumes her life. It isn't until a serious accident forces Ivy to face her problems that she begins to accept herself and her life.

Discussion

This Impossible Light tells the story of a young girl whose world falls apart after her parents break-up and her journey towards healing and learning to live again. Myers has used free verse to tell Ivy's story, breaking her poetry into five sections titled Unknown Variables, Compression, Limits, Discontinuous Function and Exponential Growth. Each title is a math term, reflective of Ivy's love of mathematics but is also representative of Ivy's life. For example in Unknown Variables her life is changing rapidly; her parents' marriage breaks up and her friend Anna returns from France a very different person. In Limits, Ivy's body finally reaches its limit when she passes out on her bike and crashes.

The first set of poems in This Impossible Light are truly heartbreaking as they chronicle the break-up of Ivy's family when her father leaves and the effect her parents divorce has on her. The loss of her father affects Ivy deeply. She describes her
"Dad making soup on Sunday afternoons
in a huge pot on the stove
belting jazz standards as he stirred."

Her parents separating destroys the family life Ivy loved so much and in several poems Ivy reminisces.
"All of us driving every summer
to the Oregon Coast...

All of us around the coffee table
playing charades.
Me, seven or eight,
running excitedly around the living room."

Post-breakup, Ivy has to deal with her father having a new girlfriend who is described as "redheaded, round-faced, smiling." In the poem "A Few Weeks", Ivy confronts her father, refusing to accept his attempted "explanation" of why he had to leave.

After describing the back story to Ivy's life, Myers chronicles her spiral into a serious eating disorder and the beginnings of her recovery. When her relationship with her parents breaks down and her friendship with Anna collapses, Ivy turns inward in an attempt to control her life.  At first Ivy identifies herself as a "Smart Girl", someone with goals and high expectations who plans to be an engineer. As a "Smart Girl" she doesn't smoke, flunk a test on purpose, or "stay up all night eating cereal and ice cream." She makes responsible choices like going to bed early, getting A's and exercising. But Ivy wishes that sometimes she could do some of those things. In the poem, "It's Not", Ivy states that this is how she "understands" she's supposed to be because she's always been told she's smart.
"When you're told enough times
the way that you are
it doesn't seem like
you're allowed to be
anything
else."

But soon she becomes critical of herself, noticing that her body has changed; she is getting taller and bigger. Ivy doesn't want to do this, instead she wants to be small and compact - "able to curl up into small shapes like I used to." Myer draws in several of the typical social influences that girls like Ivy are exposed to today; teen girls focused on their bodies (Anna hates how her legs are muscular from soccer), the emphasis on looking beautiful, and the effect of ads for diet pills. Girls who wear perfectly fitting jeans and no frizz hair are seen to be in control. In the poem "When I Pass", Ivy states,
"The skinny bodies say: Keep going, you're almost there.
The round bodies say: This is what happens when you lose control."
It's no wonder Ivy comes to believe she is not "good, responsible, careful, strong or healthy."

When Ivy is confronted by the doctor after her accident about her eating habits she struggles to understand that what she's been doing is wrong because she was trying to be good. Wasn't she merely doing what everyone else seems to be doing? Fortunately for Ivy, she is able to tell her mother, who suddenly becomes attentive to her needs, about what has been going on inside her. Ivy's openness about her eating disorder is unusual as most teens with eating disorders take some time to admit they have a problem and to actually own their illness. Ivy is helped by her mother's admission about her own struggle with anorexia and how these thoughts might always be with her. Her mother encourages Ivy to seek help, because "this isn't something you can control on your own."

Although Ivy's swift recovery is a bit misleading, Myers does a good job of showcasing some of the characteristics of eating disorders and how adults can help. In the poems, "Mom's Words" and "You Know" which involve Ivy's therapist, Dr. Clarke,  control is identified as a major component of eating disorders.  Dr. Clarke gives Ivy permission to grieve over the loss of her parents, validating her pain.  With the support of her mother and her specialists, Ivy begins her path to recovery. Acknowledging her pain over the divorce also leads her to talk to Anna and restart their friendship.

This Impossible Light is a brutally honest portrayal of the effects of divorce on children (and those left behind), and how one girl took her pain out on her own body. It acknowledges the pain that divorce inflicts on children, something many adults are unwilling to recognize. Myers, who is a self-described writer, feminist and witch, has given voice to two very important issues many teens have to confront in our post-modern world.

Book Details:

This Impossible Light by Lily Myers
New York: Philomel Books        2017
339 pp.

The Half Life of Molly Pierce by Katrina Leno

Leno tackles the unusual condition, dissociative identity disorder in The Half Life of Molly Pierce. Formerly known as multiple personality disorder, dissociative identity disorder is a controversial disorder in which  a person seems to have more than one distinct identitiy which may control the person's actions. They may not remember their actions in an identity. 

Seventeen-year-old Molly Pierce experiences long stretches where she remembers nothing about what has happened to her.  As far as she knows the missing memories started a year ago and she hasn't told anyone. No one except her thirteen-year-old sister, Hazel seems to notice. Not her parents who own a book store, nor her fifteen-year-old brother, Clancy. Molly has been seeing a therapist, Alex one a week.

It's mid October and Molly finds herself driving through Manchester-by-the-Sea, a small town in Massachusetts. She's left school and she can't remember what has happened to her over the past few hours but she decides to go home, shower, take a nap and then go to her parents bookstore to help out. Looking in her rear view mirror she sees a boy on a motorcycle in a black helmet and jacket, racing to catch up to her. While she makes it through the next intersection safely, the boy on the bike does not. His motorcycle is hit by a truck and he ends up landing on the pavement in front of Molly's stopped car.

Molly races out of her car to the boy who is badly injured and dying. He recognizes her and calls her Mabel, telling her he messed up and he's sorry. He tells her his name is Lyle Avery and that she knows him, asking her to stay with him as he dies. Molly has no idea how Lyle knows her but she agrees to "pretend" she knows him. She agrees to call his brother, Sayer and accompanies Lyle to the hospital in the ambulance. When Sayer arrives Molly tells him she has no idea who he is and she questions him as to how he knows her name. Sayer never really answers her questions and following Lyle's death, she is picked up by her parents.

Lyle's death is the trigger that eventually helps Molly realize what is happening to her and that she had created an "alter", a separate personality to deal with the stress of living. Molly is puzzled by the fact that Sayer knows her yet she has no idea how she knows him. Sayer asks her to attend Lyle's funeral which Molly agrees to do. Molly is filled with many questions. She asks Sayer how he knew where she lived, how long he's known her and how she knew Lyle. Sayer's answers are vague adding more mystery to Molly's life until she gradually begins to remember.

Molly's memories come back in reverse chronological order starting with her most recent encounter with Lyle in a warehouse just prior to his accident. Lyle and Molly argued and she told him it was over and not to follow her. But he did. On his motorcycle. After the funeral Molly remembers a second time when she met Lyle beneath the "oak tree on the edge of the graveyard in town."  Molly told Lyle something that he didn't seem to like and he left. 

This memory is so deeply upsetting to Molly that she sees her therapist Alex. At the appointment with her therapist, Molly tells him that she is missing  "blocks of time" where she has "no idea what I've been doing. Where I've been."  Molly thinks that Alex should be surprised by this but she learns that he already knows. Alex tells her that when she's herself he has told her but she doesn't remember, that she blocks it out. And he suggests to her that she needs to work it out for herself.

Each memory leads to only more and more questions and Molly gradually comes to remember events further back. At first she doesn't understand who the Molly is in her memories because she's different.
"Something has developed between yesterday and today: this weird feeling that I am not watching myself but a copy of myself. Some of the things I say, I would never say in real life. The Molly in my memories, she is bolder than I am. She is less inhibited. She is prettier. She does her makeup better than I do. Her hair. She holds her shoulders differently and she always smiles like she knows what everyone is thinking."

Molly begins to understand that Alex is right, that she has to figure this out for herself. These memories gradually lead Molly to the revelation of her alter, Mabel, who met Lyle but fell in love with his brother, Sayer. It was almost as if someone else had taken a turn at living my life.  Someone else. And suddenly the answer hangs waiting in the air in front of me.... Someone else living my life. I don't feel anyone else inside me. What else accounts for any of it?

Discussion 

The Half Life of Molly Pierce is a  novel with a unique premise that deals with a very unusual mental illness - that of a person having several personalities. In this story, Molly Pierce has a second alter, Mabel, who is more outgoing, confident and happy. As Molly recovers her memories and becomes aware of Mabel, she has to make the decision as to whether her alter is going to stay or leave.

Molly is a believable character, struggling to understand what is happening to her and ultimately deciding that she needs to live her life, that she deserves to be well and to be happy. One of the strong features in this novel is the positive portrayal of Molly's therapist and her family, both of whom give her the space and time to work through her mental illness. Leno weaves her mystery about Molly slowly and then drops hints along the way as to the identity of "Mabel".  A novel about a girl with dissociative identity disorder could have been very depressing, but Leno never lets her story slip into the darker aspects and in fact, the novel ends on a very hopeful tone. Readers get to experience some of her alter, Mabel, in a few chapters and learn why Mabel came into being. Mabel seems to recognize that her time is almost up but she seems accepting of that. Mabel writes Molly a letter explaining why Molly created her and that she now needs to go because she is harming Molly rather than helping her.

Perhaps the novel's weakness is the lack of secondary character development, particularly Molly's parents. The dynamic between Molly and her siblings was interesting to read, how they were able to recognize that she had two different personalities. Hazel knew before anyone else that Molly had Mabel, but Clancy is more accepting and more honest towards her. It was interesting that Mabel could be recognized and distinguished in family photographs from Molly.  The Half Life of Molly Pierce is an excellent debut for this author. It is a short, high interest, and well written piece of realistic fiction.

Book Details:
The Half Life of Molly Pierce by Katrina Leno
New York: HarperTeen    2014
234 pp.