Stained [Hardcover]

Jennifer Richard Jacobson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 8, 2005

Jocelyn has two boys in her life. And a priest.

Gabe has shared fourteen years of growing up next door. He's "a golden boy, an all-star." Yet now, in the spring of 1975, he's missing, disappeared on the brink of senior year at Weaver High. The whole town is set to go searching for him.

Benny has only been in New Hampshire since January, yet for Joss, he's the answer to a long-held prayer to be someone in somebody's eyes.

She loves them both.

Father Warren -- hair turning white and "kind of cool in his black clothes" -- is a link between the three of them. Or a wedge. Or a threat. For Joss, the priest holds power over her sense of herself; for Benny, power over his soul; for Gabe, so mysterious and alluring, he holds the power of destiny.

In a story shot with suspense, these four characters, and the lives of others they've touched in their small town, intermingle with unforgettable force.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It’s 1975 and the world is in the midst of the Sexual Revolution. Except not in Weaver Falls, where seventeen-year-old Jocelyn’s boyfriend Benny is wrestles with guilt over their passionate lovemaking in the woods. When Benny tells her he has bargained with God to swap their relationship in exchange for his dying mother’s life, and that popular Father Warren has counseled him that Jocelyn is of the devil, she feels that her soul is stained -- not a new emotion for her. Although as a small child she perceived the sunlit colors of the stained glass windows in St. Mary’s as God’s blessing, her mother’s divorce ten years ago has estranged both of them from the Catholic church and Jocelyn from the other kids at school. The relentless teasing all through her childhood of her same-age next-door neighbor Gabe has left her feeling even more rejected.

But now Gabe is missing, and the whole town turns out to search for him day after day, as his parents grieve, and Benny and Jocelyn’s breakup drags on agonizingly in the background. In alternate chapters, episodes show Gabe’s wild antics as a child, and his cruel tricks then despite Jocelyn’s devotion to him. After a near-rape when she was twelve, Jocelyn has kept her distance from Gabe, but now she can still draw on that invisible cord that used to bind them to follow clues to his whereabouts and try to comfort his shame that he has succumbed to Father Warren’s sexual demands.

Jennifer Richard Jacobson has built a story that treads delicately around a sensitive contemporary issue and explores first love and naïve belief with convincing characters. (Ages 14 and up) --Patty Campbell

From School Library Journal

Grade 9 Up–Sixteen-year-old Jocelyn alternates her narrative between the present of 1975, in which she grapples with an ambivalent boyfriend and the frightening disappearance of another boy whom she's known from early childhood, and the past of that childhood. Gabe, the boy who is missing, is shown to be, through Jocelyn's memories as well as his more recent actions, both strong willed and secretive. Jocelyn is clearly more stable than either Gabe or her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Benny. What she lacks, according to all three of them, is an acceptable attachment to redeeming traditionalism. This includes the fact that she never made her First Communion and seems content to be unchurched. Both Benny and Gabe seem to be influenced in some nefarious way, Jocelyn believes, by the local Roman Catholic priest. Benny tells her quite directly that she is his moral downfall because she is "stained." Jacobson creates some realistic teen characters in this tightly plotted but somewhat problematic novel about priest sex abuse. The adults here are flat and mostly unsavory or at least unsympathetic, except for Benny's virtually sainted but fatally ill mother. But that makes sense given that readers can see everyone only through Jocelyn's eyes. Less compelling is the priest's unexamined motivation. Whether or not readers have background knowledge of the ongoing Church scandal or traditional Catholicism, they will find much to consider and to discuss in this story.–Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: Atheneum/Richard Jackson Books (February 8, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 068986745X
• ISBN-13: 978-0689867453
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,277,767 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eloquent, provocative, real, March 10, 2005

By 

Sue Corbett "Miami Herald Children's Book Rev... - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stained (Hardcover)

A quietly powerful, expertly told tale about an insecure teenage waitress and three men whose lives collide with hers. Seventeen-year-old Jocelyn McGuire is 17, a lapsed Catholic in a community of believers, working in a small-town New Hampshire diner in 1975. Her childhood friend-turned-nemesis, Gabe, is missing. Her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Benny, breaks up with her on the advice of the local priest, who holds a creepy sway over his male, teenaged parishioners. Jocelyn's narration alternates between flashbacks of her history with Gabe, a past that includes a childhood sexual assault, and a present tense account of his disappearance in which she actively puzzles out what's happened. The ending is triumphant with Jocelyn realizing she's not to blame for the way Gabe or Benny have treated her, and with her taking bold action against Father Warren - a move that puts this girl with the "stained soul" squarely on the side of angels. Excellent, finely wrought fiction that will feel relevant and immediate to today's readers.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of those books you can't put down, February 25, 2005

By 

J. Davies - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Stained (Hardcover)

The characters in this book are completely haunting. Days after finishing the book, I find myself thinking about all of them--the experiences they shared, the decisions they made, the truths they learned. This is one of those books you can't put down, because even when you do, you keep thinking about it. A 5-star winner.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Provocative and Powerful, February 25, 2005

By 

Mary A. - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stained (Hardcover)

I read STAINED in one sitting, and as soon as I finished it, I started it all over again! While the suspenseful story keeps you turning the pages (Where is Gabe? Why did he disappear?), Jacobson's unpretentious, pitch-perfect writing is making its way to a deep place within you - a place that connects you to all the characters in this book and keeps you thinking about them well after the last page is turned.