Vera Violet

Gr 10 Up–Vera Violet knows what it means to be a scrapper, and it is that fighting spirit that introduces her to the boy who will ultimately become the love of her life. Survival isn’t easy for adults, much less teens, in the fictionalized town of David, WA. Timber money is drying up, poverty is rampant, and drugs are both a means of escape and a source of income. The violent arrest of her boyfriend for a murder he didn’t commit propels Vera to St. Louis, where she juxtaposes the poverty and hopelessness of her own community with the challenges of the Black students in the elementary school in which she temporarily works. Vera narrates this atmospheric treatise, with a meandering description of life, love, and loss in the state’s Olympic Peninsula. Peterson’s life experience in the area accurately portrays the hopelessness and poverty of a region that has a tragic underbelly belied by the glamour conferred on it by Stephanie Meyer’s “Twilight” series. Plagued by a ponderous pace and multiple metaphors strung together, this niche novel graphically explores violence, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual abuse of minors, and generational poverty with a verbosity that will take a toll on all but the most persistent teen.