A beautifully woven and candidly accurate account of how quickly life can change, Beneath a Meth Moon is a realistic depiction of how loss can open up a hole in someone so big that it needs to be filled. It shows how quickly someone can fall into a drug moon in desperation to make herself whole again. Laurel Daneau is just the average teenager with hair so blonde it falls down like snow. Growing up in Pass Christian with a grandmother who insists on being called M'lady, Laurel has a idyllic life full of sunlight and the warm salt smell that rises off of the ocean. M'lady teaches Laurel about life and maps out for her a beautiful future, but that future is irrevocably shattered when a storm rises angrily off of Laurel's beautiful ocean and comes down like a fist on Pass Christian, washing away her world and taking with it Laurel's mother and M'lady. Just washing them away, washing it all away. Laurel, her father, and her baby brother Jesse Jr.become displaced, having only each other's love to keep them from breaking apart in a million tiny pieces scattered on the wind. When Laurel and her little family, changed by the cruelty of fate, end up in the hands of a little town called Galilee, she quickly trades the sun of her past life for a a beautiful boy and his meth moon . Under that moon, all of Laurel's hurt washes away just like her world did, but under that moon, bits of Laurel slowly wash away, too. Piece by piece by piece. Is the powerful love of her family, her friends, enough to save her? That love which never wavers, even when Laurel is so far from home? Will she make it out of the darkness to see the sunshine again?
I just finished Beneath a Meth Moon, and I absolutely LOVED it! I picked it up yesterday morning because I had forgotten to bring the book I was already reading with me...and I finished it this morning. The narrative grabbed me hard from the opening scene and I fell deep into it. It would not let go its grip until I turned the final page and slowly had to crawl over the back cover! Woodson's book is an easy read and a gripping story; the narrative is beautifully moving. It brought tears to my eyes several times. Read Beneath a Meth Moon!
A sneak peak at the opening of Beneath a Meth Moon
It is almost winter again and the cold moves through this town like water washing over us. My coat is a gift from my father, while and filled with feathers. My hair is healthy again and the wind whips the white-blond strands of it over my face and into my eyes so that from far away, I must look like some pale ghost standing at the corner of Holland and Ankeny, right where the railroad track moves through Galilee, then on to bigger towns. My hands pressing the small black notebook to my chest, my head back, eyes closed against the wind and early falling snow. This is me now. This is me on this new road...
Later, I'll write this down--how early the snow came, how surprising, how the flakes drifted white and perfect around me. I'll write, "The moon was finally out of me, and maybe because of this, everything felt new and clean and good..."
In the distance, I hear a train whistle blowing--coming from far off. But fast-moving... toward me.
On days like this, with so much beauty circling me, it's hard not to feel a hundred years old. Hard not to let the past come raining down. Hard not to think about not deserving this kind of beauty, this kind of cold. This... this clarity. But Moses and Kaylee keep telling me that fifteen is just another beginning, like the poet with the two roads and his own choice about which one he'd be taking. You got a whole lot of roads, Kaylee says to me. And some days, I believe here. As I walk down this one... I believe her.
Kaylee says, Write an elegy to the past... and move on. She says it's all about moving on. I've read about it, Lauren. You write all the time. You can do this.
So I'll begin it this way--It's almost winter again...
Other books by Jacqueline Woodson:
Miracle Boys
Behind You
If You Come Softly
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