The Heroes We Need

Odd & True by Cat Winters
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an exciting, beautiful, layered book, and I highly recommend it. It is called YA, and sure... but I'm no young adult, so make of that what you will.

I like the premise of a couple of sisters involved in adventure with a fantasy aspect to it, but the novel is deeper by far than my expectation. The setting--rural Oregon (and California, and a few other places) in the early 1900s--is an unusual choice for such action, but it really works. The isolation and rather bleak setting, including a drab house and lifestyle to match, is the perfect backdrop for sisters yearning for greater purpose, for magic, for escape. Add to it the restrictions placed on women at that time, along with Tru's disability caused by a childhood bout with polio, and you have a pair of plucky heroines fighting against the odds. What a great starting point for an adventure.

The story of Odette and Trudchen--Od and Tru--setting out together to face monsters using only a few magical tools in their mother's old bag is interwoven with the true story of their lives told in the first person by the older sister. One story informs the other, and almost every aspect of it is a spoiler, but together they form a very sweet and sad and satisfying tale. Living with a disapproving aunt, not knowing what really became of mother and father, forced to find their way in difficult circumstances, having few options for their future, but still believing in magic and trying to find it in their lives is the perfect alchemy of real and fantastic.

Od, the doting older sister, has always filled Tru's head with the glamorous version of events of their lives, the magical version, and the reader has to wonder what really is true. I thought I knew; then I didn't; then I did. Then--nope. One of the themes, well developed and tied up with a bow, is the tension between the dreariness of their lives and the excitement of the magical tradition they are part of, pulling the reader both ways, back and forth.

Reader, it's very well handled.

The prose is spectacular, both efficient and lovely. It is not ornate in a self-conscious way, but ornamented to bring color and life to the story and characters and settings. I found the prose clear rather than difficult, and nothing impedes the action, but it was still often lyrical and in every moment striking.

The action makes this an adventure story; certain elements blur it into fantasy; and so much of it makes a realistic drama. I found it satisfying throughout. And I can confess that, unusually for me, the novel--the very last line, in fact--left me in tears.

I blame the author for writing an astonishing book.

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