Joy McCullough follows her National Book Award longlisted Blood Water Paint with another ferociously honest, unequivocally feminist novel for young adult readers.
Em's older sister, Nor, doesn't remember "those moments behind the frat house." What she remembers is waking up "in the filthy alley, stripped down, broken ribs, and a used condom next to her the only indication of what had happened." Determined to get justice for Nor, Em wrote pieces for her high school newspaper, convinced Nor to press charges and go to trial, and used social media to build the case's momentum. Nor's rapist was found guilty, but justice never came: the judge sentenced him to time served. Em's shocked rage goes viral: "I feel," she tells a reporter, "like learning how to use a f*cking sword." As her family struggles to hold themselves together--through the slut-shaming, racist comments that Em is innately violent because her father is Guatemalan, the pure agony of living with this violation--Em begins to write the story of Marguerite de Bressieux, a legendary female knight who avenged rape victims. But Em disappears into writing Marguerite's story, and what could be therapeutic turns into an unhealthy obsession.
We Are the Ashes, We Are the Fire moves with deliberate purpose between the contemporary prose account of Em and Nor Morales and Em's illuminated poetry of Marguerite's tale. McCullough's verse is spare, her economy of words forging cutting, brutal turns of phrase. Her prose, too, is beautiful and painful, leading to descriptions that leave the reader as "cracked and bruised and flayed open" as the protagonist. Appreciators of Elana K. Arnold's Red Hood or Courtney Summers's Sadie should pick up this title immediately. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness