Demetrios, Heather. I’ll Meet You There.

Demetrios, Heather.  I’ll Meet You There.  Macmillan/Henry Holt  2015  388p  $17.99  ISBN 978-0-8050-9795-5  hs  Realistic fiction  E-BN

Skylar Evans works at a motel and wants to escape her small town to attend art school in San Francisco.  But her mother loses her job, and school and escape both seem impossible.  Josh escaped the town by joining the Marines.  Now he is back from the war, sporting a prosthetic leg.  He tries to be the loud, party leading, self-assured boy who left, but he isn’t any more.

Skylar and Josh both work at the Paradise motel.  Their relationship starts as bantering and teasing, and then grows into friendship and maybe more.  By their actions, each deeply hurts the other.  Throughout the story, they learn to be honest with themselves and each other.  The story ends with possible hope for the future.

The themes of loss of limb and post traumatic stress disorder, the sexual innuendo and the eventual act (though very tastefully written) make this novel suitable for high school.  Beautifully written, it takes on timely and sensitive issues.  It holds the reader to the end and leaves him or her begging for more. 

Summary: A story about hopes and dreams shattered and rebuilt.  A wounded vet comes home, and the story is about his friends, their troubles,, and the ways they help each other.  Some sex and quite mature themes make this appropriate only for high-school collections.       

Post traumatic stress disorder-Fiction                      --Joan Theal