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| Perma-Bound Edition ©2014 | -- |
| Paperback ©2014 | -- |
Survival. Fiction.
Violence. Fiction.
Illegal aliens. Fiction.
Mexican Americans. Fiction.
California. Fiction.
A taut thriller about Angel, a 14-year-old who is pursued by a man who has a deadly need to silence her. In a keenly evoked California desert setting, Angel desperately seeks to escape. Inadvertently, she finds help with a group of caring Mexican-American neighbors, who refuse to let her face her nemesis alone. A loner, Angel's been homeschooled by a meth-addict mother who has hooked up with a "long string of abusive boyfriends picked with the accuracy of a heat-seeking missile." Her latest, Scotty, is a doozy, and when Angel finds her mom buried in the desert, he realizes she can put him behind bars. A hunter of contraband, he proceeds to use all his wiles to keep her quiet. Neighbor Abuela makes a plan to help her escape, resulting in the entire family becoming targets. Angel struggles with trust, guilt and maintaining her focus even as she is frightened to death. Suspense never lets up, as the third-person narrator monitors Scotty's pursuit when Angel doesn't. Kids and their teacher at a Head Start classroom provide a sense of normalcy and yet are clearly potential victims, upping the ante even more. The small, decaying towns, the Salton Sea and the desert heat provide a vivid backdrop for the unfolding drama. Angel is a tough heroine who needs help but knows if she accepts it, she is risking other lives, too. Relentless, heart-stopping suspense. (Thriller. 12 & up)
ALA BooklistFrom Night of the Hunter to countless westerns, the theme of "a bad man coming" is a powerful one: there is an unstoppable force on its way to deliver a brutal reckoning, and the fun is in watching the heroes try (in vain) to avoid the final battle. Price's fast, sharp, unsentimental contribution follows 14-year-old Angel, on the run since a villain named Scotty (ominously kept offstage for almost the duration of the book) murdered her mother and is now coming after Angel to wipe up the last bit of evidence. After racing across the desert, Angel stumbles into the lives of an extended family of immigrants me legal, some not o want to help the shell-shocked, rage-filled girl without putting their own loved ones in danger. Price's biggest curve is turning the hunted into the hunter after Angel decides that she must find Scotty first. Never showy, this is hard, gritty realism, and Price's depiction of the twitchy psyche of an abused girl is dead-on. Serious thriller fans will be more than satisfied.
Horn BookAngel is used to relying on no one. But when her mother is murdered by her boyfriend--who then comes after Angel--she needs a place to hide. Though she is putting others in danger by accepting their help, Angel learns that the people you let in become the people you love. Stark narrative voice echoes the desert setting in this survival tale.
Kirkus Reviews (Fri Oct 04 00:00:00 CDT 2024)A taut thriller about Angel, a 14-year-old who is pursued by a man who has a deadly need to silence her. In a keenly evoked California desert setting, Angel desperately seeks to escape. Inadvertently, she finds help with a group of caring Mexican-American neighbors, who refuse to let her face her nemesis alone. A loner, Angel's been homeschooled by a meth-addict mother who has hooked up with a "long string of abusive boyfriends picked with the accuracy of a heat-seeking missile." Her latest, Scotty, is a doozy, and when Angel finds her mom buried in the desert, he realizes she can put him behind bars. A hunter of contraband, he proceeds to use all his wiles to keep her quiet. Neighbor Abuela makes a plan to help her escape, resulting in the entire family becoming targets. Angel struggles with trust, guilt and maintaining her focus even as she is frightened to death. Suspense never lets up, as the third-person narrator monitors Scotty's pursuit when Angel doesn't. Kids and their teacher at a Head Start classroom provide a sense of normalcy and yet are clearly potential victims, upping the ante even more. The small, decaying towns, the Salton Sea and the desert heat provide a vivid backdrop for the unfolding drama. Angel is a tough heroine who needs help but knows if she accepts it, she is risking other lives, too. Relentless, heart-stopping suspense. (Thriller. 12 & up)
Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)Price (The Interrogation of Gabriel James) delivers a visceral thriller that starts with the murder of 14-year-old Angel-s mother and ratchets up the tension from there. Angel finds her mother-s body and vows to escape Scotty, the latest in a line of abusive men her mother had been involved with. After Scotty-s failed attempt to burn her alive in his trailer, in the remote southwestern desert, Angel makes her way to a neighboring home, where she soon finds help in the form of Rita, a Head Start worker in a nearby town who takes in a reluctant Angel. The story doesn-t shy away from the horror of the violence Scotty inflicts, killing animals and those who help Angel, while she contemplates taking revenge on her mother-s murderer and worries about the repercussions of drawing Scotty closer to her newfound family. Price-s pacing is tight, aided by direct, clipped prose that underscores Scotty-s brutality and Angel-s fragile emotional state. Both the best and worst of humanity shine through in this gripping novel. Ages 12-up. (Oct.)
School Library Journal (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)Gr 7 Up-Angel's life is a nightmare. Her mother drinks and does drugs and her mother's boyfriend, Scotty, sexually abuses her. One morning after a night of hiding from him in the desert, Angel returns home to find that he has killed her mother and has been waiting so he can murder her, too. Angel barely escapes, but since Scotty is an expert tracker, the hunt has only just begun. During her flight, she meets people who put themselves in danger to protect her, acts of kindness that the untrusting 14-year-old cannot understand. As these caring folks keep shielding her from Scotty, who always seems to know where she is, Angel struggles with the danger she's putting them in and she wonders if she would be better off on her own. She begins to realize that no matter how worthless she feels, she needs and deserves love and that she is important to others. The story is a fast-paced adventure with an interesting premise, but at times it's hard to believe that so many strangers would risk their lives to hide the teen in their homes. Fans of dramatic, high-adrenaline books with hard-knocked protagonists might enjoy the basic premise. Traci Glass, Eugene Public Library, OR
Starred Review for Kirkus Reviews
School Library Journal Starred Review
ALA Booklist
ALA/YALSA Best Book For Young Adults
Horn Book
Kirkus Reviews (Fri Oct 04 00:00:00 CDT 2024)
Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)
School Library Journal (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)
Voice of Youth Advocates
Wilson's High School Catalog
Wilson's Junior High Catalog
The fight started after midnight, Scotty drunk, Angel’s mother shrill on crystal. When it didn’t die down, Angel left the trailer to sleep nearby in a small draw where one of the drainage creases made a cradle. Screened from night winds, cut off from the yelling and threats, Angel could nestle in her robe and watch the stars. She no longer made wishes. Fourteen was too old for wishes. Sleeping outside was just one more thing that had to be done. When she awakened at dawn, the truck was gone and the trailer was empty. The inside wall by the door was bloody.
* * *
LATER ANGEL WISHED SHE’D CHANGED CLOTHES, shed her robe and put on jeans and a jacket. Wished she’d grabbed her daypack and taken the bread and a couple of water bottles. But no. She had to find her mother. Couldn’t think of anything else.
The pickup tracks went north, away from the westbound dirt ruts that connected their squatter camp to Dillon Road. Maybe she’d noticed that before she went into the trailer. Maybe that caused the rush. Angel knew there was nothing north except cactus and yucca and tall scree ridges that bordered the California desert.
She had walked twenty minutes or more when she stopped to slip off a shoe and shake out an annoying piece of gravel. In that quiet moment she heard the drone of Scotty’s truck bucking terrain in compound low and found his line of dust on the horizon. She stepped out of her sweatpants, used them to erase her footprints as she scrabbled several yards from the track to flatten behind a creosote bush.
She waited until he passed before looking up. Seemed like he was alone in the cab. She didn’t pay any attention to the brief flood of sadness. Sorrow can make its own desert and Angel’s tears dried a long time ago. If anything, she would occasionally notice a knot of anger burning somewhere in her chest. When the truck was out of sight, she stood, shook her pants out, put them on, and resumed walking.
Four months ago, Angel and her mom had been running from a guy named Jerry, another in a long string of abusive boyfriends picked with the accuracy of a heat-seeking missile. They’d hitched out of L.A. heading for Arizona. Supposed to find a cousin in Phoenix. A ride they caught in Ontario let them off at a truck stop in Cabazon. Angel’s mom struck up a conversation at the lunch counter while they waited for their burgers. Scotty was an easy acquisition.
Clever Scotty. In the truck stop he told them he was a hunting guide. Wrong. Turned out to be a gun dealer who trapped eagles and tortoises for quick money. He drove them east into the badlands. Big old GMC pickup towing a twenty-foot American Freedom trailer, both painted camo. Past Desert Hot Springs he took some dirt ruts into the flats and stopped at the jagged ridges bordering Joshua Tree. From a distance their camp looked just like more sagebrush. The beatings didn’t begin until the third week of the new relationship. Scotty didn’t climb in bed with Angel until the fourth week.
* * *
FOLLOWING HIS PICKUP TRACKS AND, finally, the drag marks, Angel found her mother’s shallow grave before noon. She pawed through the loose dirt until she uncovered a wrist, pulled till she cleared the hand. Her mother’s fingernails were broken. Scotty had torn the rings off. Angel pictured her mother clawing at Scotty’s eyes. Scotty. Angel had no weapon to kill him. That would have to wait.
Her mother. Lila Lee Dailey. Gone to dust. Angel could feel the cry coming, bad, huge, and it scared her. What if she couldn’t stop? What if she broke apart? She pushed the sadness away. Got hold of it. Wadded it up. Made it tiny. Put it down deep. She could bring it back later if she wanted to. Right now there were other things.
Sitting beside the grave, Angel knew she couldn’t leave until she fixed it. Piled rocks on it high enough and wide enough to keep the coyotes out. She would roll in the dirt around the mound to mask any blood residue with her scent. She didn’t realize she might have learned that from Scotty. But first things first: a good place to hide if he came back.
She scanned the area. A climbing rock? A cave? Nope. A patch of scrub? Too obvious. She would have to dig. Fifty yards farther north, past a mesquite thicket, she scooped a shallow depression behind one of the yucca plants dotting the valley floor. If Scotty returned, he’d see the rock mound over the grave. He’d look for her. Might check nearby bushes, the obvious places, in case his arrival had surprised her, but he wouldn’t walk far. He wouldn’t guess she’d go to much trouble to hide. He accused her of being silly and lazy. He would figure she’d run. Head west to Dillon Road, to Thousand Palms, maybe on to Cathedral City. Well, she would. Later.
The search for heavy stones required care. Rattlers. Scorpions. An eroded ledge nearby offered some heavy sand clods at the top, several loaf-sized stones along the bottom. It took her a couple of hours to carry them and cover the grave. When she finished she was seriously thirsty. She thought for a moment but found no solution. She collected her robe from the graveside, and used its hem to brush footprints back to her burrow. Nothing else to do but lie down, pull the robe over her, and wait until dark.
Copyright © 2011 by Charlie Price
Excerpted from Desert Angel by Charlie Price
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Fourteen-year-old Angel wakes up one morning at her desert trailer home to discover her mother has been murdered by a lowlife named Scotty, who has vanished. Angel has no water, no weapon, but she knows that Scotty, an expert tracker and hunter, will surface soon in order to eliminate her as a witness. She has to run, to disappear, if she is to survive and tell the world what happened. Her flight takes her through a harsh landscape to places she never expected to be, forcing her to trust others for the first time and strengthening her in ways she doesn't even anticipate . . . until it's time to take a stand.