Tag: compound fracture

Compound Fracture is a young adult thriller about an autistic trans teenager in West Virginia seeking vengeance in a decades-old feud. Miles Abernathy lives in an Appalachian town ruled by Sheriff Davies, where the Abernathys have been fighting ever since Miles’ relative Saint Abernathy was killed in a public execution following a miners’ strike. When he’s beaten almost to death by the sheriff’s son and his friends, Miles is forced to confront the violence of the town and the price you have to pay to fight against injustice and cruelty.

Fans of Andrew Joseph White’s other YA novels will see similarities here, with the trans teen boy protagonist and harsh violence of the narrative, but Compound Fracture is a less of a horror or supernatural story, and more of a grounded one, with the horrors being more about power and violence in rural Appalachia. The narrative is pretty straightforward, with a generally recognisable young adult novel plot of fighting against something and growing into yourself, just with a much more brutal reality than the typical YA book. As someone who no longer reads much young adult fiction, I find myself drawn to Andrew Joseph White’s books because they offer something different, something with more edge and violence. In this one, the community-finding and identity-exploring elements are carefully combined with the thriller-like plot as Miles is drawn into violence, and it makes for a gripping read.

A lot of the class and politics in the book isn’t something familiar to me as a UK-based reader, and the narrative simplifies a lot in order to be a compelling YA novel, but there is some interesting nuance around people drawn into violence and hatred. There’s a lot of big things covered in the novel—opioid addiction, poverty, alcoholism, disability—alongside the difficulties of being trans and queer in the USA, and the book explores Miles’ family’s reactions to his coming out without offering hopelessness to trans teens reading the book. This isn’t the first YA novel I’ve read that explores what happens when teenagers are forced into larger community violence and issues (Angeline Boulley’s Firekeeper’s Daughter was in my head when reading this book, for example), but I think it’s a great way for young adult fiction to go beyond what are normally seen as the interests of teenagers and YA fiction readers specifically.

Compound Fracture was probably my favourite Andrew Joseph White novel so far, despite the fact I’m usually more of a horror fan. There’s a lot to get into and I liked how many different things the book played with, even when things had to be simplified for the sake of the story or chosen perspective.