I think the reviewers who compared this book to a Charles de Lint story have it about right; it’s a little plainer and rougher-edged than de Lint, but it has much the same feeling and should appeal to the same audience, which includes not only young adults but anybody who can remember being a “young adult,” with all the uncertainty that that implies. It also shares with many de Lint stories a background of folk music and traveling musicians, which always appeals to me.
Sapphire Blue, or “Bluebird,” or just plain Blue, a girl in her late teens, sets out to look for her older sister, Cass, who left home abruptly a couple of years before and didn’t telephone Blue on their mother’s birthday, as she’d promised she would always do. Cass is the only person Blue has felt close to after their musician mother died of cancer; their aunt, who took them in, is pleasant enough but very conventional. To speed her hunt for her sister, Blue goes to a deserted crossroads at midnight and makes a deal with a woman in a red dress, whom she believes is the devil. The woman gives Blue boots that will point her in Cass’s direction, but Blue has only six months to find her sister: if she fails, the woman can claim both of their souls. As a down payment, furthermore, the woman takes Blue’s voice; Blue cannot speak for most of the story, but must communicate by writing notes. An additional bit of “fine print” in the deal states that if Blue tells anyone her real name—or if they find it out on their own—she must leave them within three days, or harm will come to them.
Blue travels across the country with little more than her (and before that, her mother’s) guitar in its battered case, encountering good people and then bad people and then good people again and so on. It’s a somewhat repetitive alternation, but all the people are interesting, especially Steve, a young transgender person, and Tish, Blue’s mother’s former partner in music and life. The woman in the red dress shows up again from time to time, too, as does a man who seems much more like a devil than she does. As she deals with the joys and dangers of her journey, Blue learns more and more about who she is. The book is well written throughout, and I found it very satisfying. I hope we hear more from this author.
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