Finding H.F.

by Julia Watts

Book Overview

Abandoned by her mother and raised by her loving but religiously zealous grandmother, 16-year-old Heavenly Faith Simms (H.F. for short) has never felt like she belonged anywhere. When she finds her mother's address in a drawer, she and her best friend, Bo, an emotionally repressed gay boy, hit the road in Bo's scrap heap of a car and head south. Their journey through the heart of the American South awakens both teens to the realization that there...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1594932859
• ISBN13: 9781594932854
• Release Date: August 2011
• Publisher: Bella Books
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.4" x 8.2"
• Age Range: 13 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 8 and higher

Customer Reviews

My first,

I found this book by accident one day while browsing in a gay bookstore in downtown Atlanta. From page one I loved it. H.F. is someone we all wish we could meet. Male or female. I totally fell in love with Beau (why can't I find a man like that?) and just her journey, not just physically, but emotionaly is enough to touch us all. A lot of people find it hard to go from the city to the country or vice versa but Ms. Watts genuinely brings our characters, stranded in a small hick town in Ketucky, to Atlanta and beyond without a hitch. By the time I'd driven from the store to my home I was halfway through the book; stoplights ARE helpful sometimes. Excellent novel. Excellent writer. Im hooked on Julia Watts.

A Wonderful Coming-of-Age Novel

Although I really enjoyed all of the Julia Watts novels, this is by far the best! This is a tender, funny, intelligent novel about the friendship between a young lesbian and a young gay man living in Morgan, KY. The novel explores multiple issues including tolerance of gays and lesbians in small town America, the views of organized religion on gays and lesbians, and what it means to be "different" in our society. I highly recommend this book, and I think it should be required reading for high school students or for anyone who remembers what it was like to be one.

A welcome return to Morgan, KY

Julia Watts, the best kept secret in gay/lesbian lit, returns to her fictional town of Morgan, Kentucky to look at the lives at two teenagers there. Despite that fact that we Watts fans know that the town is practically teeming with gay people (see Wildwood Flowers and Mixed Blessings, also by Watts), they begin a search for themselves on the road to Florida, and in doing so help consolidate their identities and the gay parts of those identities.I'm a solid fan of Watts and she handles the territory with her usual skill and wit. Watts is one of the funniest writers now working (and certainly working in the GLB vein). Get this, spend the evening enjoying Watts's great writing, and then get the others.

A riveting book by a gifted author

Finding H.F. is an evocative, compelling novel -- one you'll tell your friends to read. The characters are so real and irresistible, you'll feel as if you've moved in with them. Julia Watts is an exceptionally talented writer.

A new book by one of our best writers

Julia Watts has turned out four novels (Wildwood Flowers, Phases of the Moon, Mixed Blessings and this one) set in the fictional community of Morgan, Kentucky. This one is one of her best. I've always wondered why more adventure novels don't have a female protagonist as this one does. H.F. and Bo travel through the south in search of H.F.'s mother, but instead find acceptance and love through the gay community. It parallels a journey many of us have had, leaving our families of origin and bonding with our family of choice. As alawys, watts writes with great sensitivity and skill. Why her work has not had wider acclaim I don't know. Perhaps this one will gain her the wide audience she so deserves. Some would hesitate to compare Watts to authors like Michael Chabon, they shouldn't. She is accruing a body of work the equal of anyone currently working in fiction.