Beneath a Meth Moon: An Elegy

By Jacqueline Woodson

Book Overview

In this "powerful, stripped down novel" (School Library Journal) a young girl battles against losing herself to her addiction.

" Makes] it abundantly clear how easy it is to succumb to meth and how difficult it is to recover from it."--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Brutally honest. . . . An intimate and compelling story of survival."--The Horn Book

Laurel would do anything to turn back time . . .

To tell her mother and grandmother not to stay home near the beach with a hurricane coming . . .

To say no when her boyfriend, T-Boom, the co-captain of the basketball team, offers her that first hit of moon--the drug that makes her feel bigger than all she's lost . . .

To have been there for her little brother and her best friend, Kaylee, when they needed her, instead of chasing the moon.

But she can't.

All she can do is move forward now. And only she can decide whether to face the pain and joy that is a part of living, or follow the moon to numbness and probably death. Only she can decide to choose to be there for her family and friends--or give them another thing to grieve.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0142423920
• ISBN13: 9780142423929
• Release Date: February 2013
• Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.0"
• Age Range: 12 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 7 and higher

Customer Reviews

Hopeful

"This is an elegy ... and prayer for the ones who didn't make it." Of her work, Woodson says "I started researching and trying to find the happy ending and realizing I needed to write my own happy ending be ause so many [endings for meth addicts] were not happy. Laurel's is a hopeful story... she has a deep internal strength... I like to believe this deep strength exists in all of us." This is a heartaching story of a girl who lost her mother and grandmother in Hurricane Katrina's flood waters. Then, she loses herself to meth, to the light of the moon and its false happiness. As usual, Woodson's captures her characters clearly and writes something that will enthrall you, disgust you, bring you to tears, and lift you to hope.