Bleed Like Me

Gr 9 Up—Seventeen-year-old Amelia Gannon is the apple of her parents' eyes for the first 12 years of her life. Then, they decide to adopt, and the girl winds up with three orphaned brothers who had been living in the streets of Guatemala. Overwhelmed by what they have taken on, Amelia's father begins spending most of his time "at work," leaving her mother to deal with the wild, streetwise boys alone. Unable to cope, her mother only spends time with Amelia when asking her for help. Amelia starts avoiding home altogether, dividing her time between school and her job at the hardware store and cutting herself to deal with the anger and feelings of abandonment. Michael Brooks has been in foster care since getting out of juvenile detention, where social workers discovered the scars from his father's beatings. He turns to drugs and various forms of physical pain to handle his own anger and fear. When the two teens meet, an obsessive relationship forms that sends both of their already troubled lives spiraling deep into addiction and despair. The story suggests that the systems that are currently in place to deal with troubled adolescents provide little if any rehabilitation and, in some cases, make things worse. Author Desir offers readers little to hold onto other than a slim thread of hope for recovery in the epilogue.—Cary Frostick, formerly at Mary Riley Styles Public Library, Falls Church, VA