The stars at Oktober Bend

By Glenda Millard

Subjects: Teenagers, Mute persons, Wounds and injuries, Teenage boys, Teenage girls, High schools, Interpersonal relations, Child soldiers, Teenage refugees, Fiction, Sexual abuse, Children's fiction, Juvenile fiction, Poetry, Refugees, People with mental disabilities, Youth, fiction, Interpersonal relations, fiction

Description: Alice is fifteen, with hair as red as fire and skin as pale as bone. Something inside Alice is broken: she remembers words but struggles to speak them. Still, Alice knows words are for sharing, so she pins them to posters in tucked-away places: railway waiting rooms, fish-and-chip shops, quiet corners. Manny is sixteen, with a scar from shoulder to elbow. Something inside Manny is broken: he was once a child soldier, forced to do terrible, violent things. But in a new land with new people who will care for him, he spends time exploring on foot. And in his pocket, he carries a poem he scooped up. And he knows the words by heart. When Manny and Alice meet, their relationship brings the beginning of love and healing.