A review by thatjamiea
All the Wind in the World by Samantha Mabry
4.0
This was a different sort of read. Nominated for a National Book Award for YA, this is the story of Sarah Jac and James. More than half of the United States has turned to desert and nothing grows but the sort of plant you can distill into tequila. Sarah and James move around the west from labor camp to labor camp, hoping to save money to move east to the ocean and a farm of their own some day.
We never find out about James' early years, but we do find out about Sarah's. She and her sister, Lane, lived on a farm with their grandmother. Their mother abandons them, but it doesn't matter much to Sarah. After the death of her grandmother, Sarah and Lane are forced to travel to Chicago to eek out a living. Sarah meets James and after Lane dies she and James hit the road to try to find, if not their fortunes, at least a little bit of life they can call their own.
They move from camp to camp, but something bad happens during a dust storm and they're forced to go on the lam and abandon their savings. They end up at a ranch that people say is cursed and it sure starts to seem like it.
This is definitely not for the young reader, despite being labeled as YA. There's a very uncomfortable portion at the beginning of the novel where it gets really weird as Sarah refers to James as her cousin, but...they have way more than a cousin-like relationship. Beyond that, it's quite violent interspersed with a lot of sex, so proceed with caution for young or sensitive readers.
We never find out about James' early years, but we do find out about Sarah's. She and her sister, Lane, lived on a farm with their grandmother. Their mother abandons them, but it doesn't matter much to Sarah. After the death of her grandmother, Sarah and Lane are forced to travel to Chicago to eek out a living. Sarah meets James and after Lane dies she and James hit the road to try to find, if not their fortunes, at least a little bit of life they can call their own.
They move from camp to camp, but something bad happens during a dust storm and they're forced to go on the lam and abandon their savings. They end up at a ranch that people say is cursed and it sure starts to seem like it.
This is definitely not for the young reader, despite being labeled as YA. There's a very uncomfortable portion at the beginning of the novel where it gets really weird as Sarah refers to James as her cousin, but...they have way more than a cousin-like relationship. Beyond that, it's quite violent interspersed with a lot of sex, so proceed with caution for young or sensitive readers.