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From bestselling author Lisa Graff, this important coming-of-age story follows a thirteen-year-old with a mysterious scar on her face—and a big secret she feels pressured to keep.
Fallon Little has a secret—and it's not how she got the enormous scar that divides her face in two.
Thirteen-year-old Fallon has only ever told one person what really happened on the day she got her scar. Why would she? The truth is dark, and Fallon has much brighter things to focus on, like being cast as the lead in the school play, and hanging out with her two best friends, Trent and Kaia. But when Fallon's uncle Geebie dies, his funeral ignites a wildfire of events that Fallon can't manage to tamp down. The school play is spiraling out of control, Fallon's impossible Aunt Lune comes to live with them, and Trent and Kaia might just be so into each other that there isn't room for Fallon in their friend group any more. And when secrets even worse than the one about Fallon's scar threaten to come to light, Fallon might not have the strength to keep them buried for much longer.
Through unflinching prose and with a pitch-perfect voice, bestselling author Lisa Graff explores the power of confronting the past as a way to heal in the present in this propulsive and absorbing tour de force.
"The short chapters with pithy titles build intrigue and momentum…The story's pitch-perfect tone balances sad and funny moments impeccably. Fallon demonstrates incredible depth and a rollicking sense of humor…Darkness and light interplay with perfection." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Graff infuses viscerally rendered realities of lingering trauma with moments of lightheartedness to deliver a meticulously calibrated work about a girl who refuses to be defined by her past...Funny and compassionate Fallon's sunny narration accessibly explores heavy topics such as abuse at the hands of a family member, the psychological effects of a lasting injury, and the weight of keeping secrets." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Fallon's feisty, funny personality shines through her first-person narration, but she also possesses a frankness that makes readers party to the complex issues she is working through….There's no denying that this is a weighty novel, but it respects kids' abilities to handle reading about tough subjects…Fallon's story may help them feel empowered and less alone." ―Booklist (starred review)
This information about A Scar like a River was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Lisa Graff is the author of many award-winning novels, including The Thing About Georgie, Umbrella Summer, Absolutely Almost, Lost in the Sun, and A Tangle of Knots, which was nominated for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature. A graduate of UCLA and a recipient of an MFA in Creative Writing for Children from The New School, Lisa also spent five years as an editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux Books for Young Readers. She now lives with her family outside Philadelphia, and she invites you to visit her online at lisagraff.com.
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