Book Smart Kate

Book: 🌟🌟🌟🌟 🌟 Audiobook: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Spice: N/A

By Kevin Wilson

“The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.”

These are the words at the center of this beautiful and thought-provoking book about youth, art, and the moments that shape us into who we will become in the future.

Frankie is a sixteen-year-old artistic loner in the small town of Coalfield, Tennessee, who dreams of being a writer. When Zeke moves to town, she finds a kindred loaner spirit in the talented young artist. One day, they make a poster. Frankie writes, “The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us,” and Zeke draws around them. Because Frankie’s troublemaking triplet brothers once stole a copy machine, they make hundreds of copies and hang them up across town, creating chaos they never could have predicted.

Years later, now-famous author Frankie Budge is contacted by a reporter about the Coalfield Panic of 1996, causing her to revisit the profound events of that summer.

This book has kept me thinking for days. I took away two things from this book. First is how art is about what the artist meant in creating it and the meaning individuals assign to it – their hopes, dreams, and fears. Second, pivotal moments in our youth help chart our future trajectory, and the same events can impact individuals very differently.