Young adult literature has no shortage of riffs on Louisa May Alcott's classic Little Women. The best of these converse fluently with Alcott's novel while adding new perspectives that seem essential. Katie Bernet's audacious debut, Beth Is Dead, is an astonishingly successful addition to their ranks.
The 21st-century-set novel opens as Jo and Amy March find the body of their sister Beth near the house of Jo's friend and Amy's clandestine hook-up, Laurie. Bernet nimbly moves among the POVs of all four March sisters to unspool the ensuing investigation and to reveal events that led up to the murder.
Bernet makes a brilliant authorial choice that is also the most significant break from Alcott's canon--well, after murder. In Bernet's rendition, Mr. March isn't an army chaplain but an author. His breakout novel is Little Women, a thinly veiled depiction of the lives of his daughters (Beth dies in this one, too), which he publishes to immediate controversy and commercial success. This move allows Bernet to put her March sisters in relationship with readers' preconceived notions of Alcott's March sisters and to push against simplistic, unfairly limited understandings of their characters.
Lest this all sound too cerebral to be fun, Beth Is Dead is also a whopping good murder mystery. Who among the denizens of Alcott's Concord, Mass., could be capable of such a heinous crime? Toward the end of Beth Is Dead, Jo recounts asking her father why his fictional Beth had to die. "He said that... her loss would stay with his readers forever." Bernet's novel will, too. --Stephanie Appell, freelance reviewer