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Reviews
Ascender, Volume 3: The Digital Mage by Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen Audubon Cat by Mary Calhoun and Susan Bonners
The Canyon's Edge by Dusti Bowling
Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas
A Curious Incident by Vicki Delany
Delicious in Dungeon, Volume 7 by Ryoko Kui
Delivery to the Lost City by P.G. Bell Hatch by Kenneth Oppel and Sophie Amoss (Narrator)
The Library of Lost and Found by Phaedra Patrick
Made You Look by Diane Roberts
Moriarty the Patriot, Volume 1 by Ryƍsuke Takeuchi and Hikaru Miyoshi
Muffin But Murder by Victoria Hamilton
Muted by Tami Charles
The Mystery of the Haunted Cottage by Derek Landy
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
The 117-Storey Treehouse by Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton
One Poison Pie by Lynn Cahoon
Santa's Husband by Daniel Kibblesmith and A.P. Quach
The Scarecrow of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Speculative Los Angeles edited by Denise Hamilton
Spells and Scones by Bailey Cates and Amy Rubinate (Narrator)
Sprinkle with Murder by Jenn McKinlay
Stuck on Murder by Lucy Lawrence
Sunny Rolls the Dice by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm
Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All by Laura Ruby
This Spell Can't Last by Isabel Sterling
We Could Be Heroes by Mike Chen
White Nights by Ann Cleeves

Miscellaneous
January 2021 Sources

January 2021 Summary

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The Canyon's Edge: 02/19/21

The Canyon's Edge

The Canyon's Edge by Dusti Bowling was inspired by a tragic drowning during a desert flash flood. In Bowling's version, father and daughter both survive, but they are carrying the trauma of seeing a loved one gunned down in a restaurant.

Nora and her father go hiking in a secluded Sonoran canyon. It's the first time he has taken her anywhere since her mother died. He hasn't left the house either. The world is too unsafe, too unpredictable. He believes this out of the way piece of nature will be safe because there won't be people. He doesn't take into account the way a distant monsoonal rain can cause a flash flood.

The opening and closing of this novel are written in prose. The actual survival bit where Nora is separated from her father and she assumes the worst is told in free form poems. The poems are mostly short. They are all raw with emotion. Many of them mimic the shape of the canyon she is now struggling to escape.

Nora's time in the canyon can also be mapped on the road narrative spectrum. As the bulk of the novel is about Nora's survival on her own, she is an orphan traveler (FF). Her journey is through the wild lands (99) of the canyon in an effort to find her father and escape. The route, though, is through the labyrinth (99). While she and her father both face near death experiences, ultimately the experience is transformative, bringing them out of their extreme grief and making them ready to start living outside of their home again. Summarized, The Canyon's Edge is a poetic journey of an orphan through the wild lands via the labyrinth (FF9999).

Five stars

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