Sarah Miller, author of Hanged!, pens an intriguing, engrossing young adult biography in Hick, about pioneering female journalist Lorena "Hick" Hickok. Miller, like her subject, "lure[s] readers in at the start and hold[s] them captive until the end" as she recounts Hick's life, her career, and her complex relationship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
Miller delivers a well-researched, fascinating biography of a person who played an important and uncommon role in U.S. history. The author gives a crystalline depiction of Hick's frustrations as a woman in a male-dominated field ("My God, how tired I get of being a woman reporter!") and viscerally portrays the struggles Hick and Eleanor experienced as women in a queer relationship under the blinding lights of national politics. Readers who enjoyed Most Dangerous by Steve Sheinkin or Amelia Lost by Candace Fleming will likely appreciate both Miller's writing and the extraordinary life of Lorena Hickok. Miller includes a note on language and the use of "queer," as well as extensive backmatter, an author's note, sources, and notes. --Jen Forbus, freelancer