Jonathan Hill (Americus) sets the sweet and heartbreaking Odessa in a dystopian future where a group of siblings seek their estranged mother. Both hilarious and devastating, Hill's YA graphic novel is about reckoning with the wounds of the past and moving forward with courage and strength despite the future being fundamentally unknowable.
Following a series of catastrophic earthquakes, the landscape and infrastructure of the western United States has been permanently devastated. Though some communities persist in isolation, the path ahead is dubious. For Vietnamese American Virginia Crane, the loss of "the world we had built" is worsened by an even deeper personal tragedy: eight years ago, Ginny's mother, Odessa, left the family. Thrown off balance by the sudden arrival of a letter and gift from her mother and irked by her father's continued silence on the subject, Ginny resolves to strike out on her own to find Odessa--and is chagrined when her younger brothers, Harry and Wes, insist on tagging along.
Odessa maintains a brisk pace and is enriched by an eccentric and charismatic supporting cast (including Wes and Harry, who provide frequent comic relief). Hill's art features a thick black line and a palette of black, white and washed muted pink. The structured squares and rectangles of the panels accentuate the broken, rounded lines of the illustrations within, perfectly capturing the grandeur of the ruined landscape and the uncertainty of those who live in it. Hill reflects on family obligations but Odessa touches on a more urgent theme as well: the impossible challenge of releasing the past and embracing an uncertain future. "The world ended, right? But it didn't. We're still here. Things never end. They just change." --Devon Ashby, sales assistant, Shelf Awareness