I Am the Cage
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
“I Am the Cage gives resounding voice to the voiceless.” –The Associated Press
“Powerful.″ –Booklist, starred review
“Visceral, wrenching, and beautiful.” –John Green, #1 bestselling author of Turtles All the Way Down and The Fault in Our Stars
“The sense of powerlessness—and redemption—will stay with you.” –Jojo Moyes, #1 bestselling author of We All Live Here and Me Before You
Fish Creek, Wisconsin—Beautiful. Quiet. Isolated. Anonymous. It’s all that nineteen-year-old Elisabeth needs, and everything she wants. Cloistered in her tiny cabin, Elisabeth is determined to be alone, hiding from her memories and making sure that no one can ever hurt her again.
But when a massive snowstorm strikes, plunging the town into darkness, Elisabeth finally allows herself to accept help from her neighbor, Noah, the town’s young sheriff. Forced to show him more vulnerability than she ever intended, Elisabeth realizes she can no longer outrun the scars of her childhood, and facing the darkness might be exactly what she needs to let the light in.
In a searing own-voices story accented by poignant childhood flashbacks and stunning poetry, Allison Sweet Grant’s young adult debut is a quietly powerful portrait of a young woman’s journey to confront the medical trauma inflicted to “fix” her—and heal her heart in the process. An emotional coming-of-age story about a young woman running away from herself, yet grasping to find a way back. Deeply moving, authentically raw, and humming with the possibility of a new love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Nineteen-year-old Elisabeth Amos, who is still navigating complications following a major surgery for fibular short congenital femur and fibular hemimelia at age 11, decides to forgo college. Now she lives alone in a secluded cabin in Fish Creek, Wis. Beyond her job at a local store, she keeps to herself, until a power outage during a snowstorm forces her to confront her fear of authority figures and rely on her neighbor, Sheriff Noah Harmon, for assistance. Elisabeth opens up to Noah and, with his help, grapples with her long-buried memories of her various medical procedures and the pain she's endured, as well as the neglect she experienced from her doctors and mother. In this semi-autobiographical debut, as addressed in an author's note, Grant moves back and forth in time, highlighting the trauma Elisabeth experienced in white-knuckled detail ("The friction of bone and flesh and blood and steel. It feels sticky and hot, like oil on fire"). Through Elisabeth's poetry, integrated throughout, Grant artfully showcases the complicated back-and-forth between keeping oneself safe and staunching one's own growth. Elisabeth and Noah's dialogue crackles with tension and sincerity, and depictions of Elisabeth's harrowing struggles with her narcissistic mother are cathartic. Most characters read as white. Ages 12–up.
