Author & Consultant
                      Charlie Price

 

 Starred  KIRKUS REVIEW

*DESERT ANGEL 
Author: Price, Charlie

Review Issue Date: August 15, 2011
Online Publish Date: August 3, 2011
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pages: 240
Price ( Hardcover ): $15.99
Publication Date: October 25, 2011
ISBN ( Hardcover ): 978-0-374-31775-1
Category: 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)

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PUBLISHERS WEEKLY REVIEW          August 22, 2011 issue.

Desert Angel

Charlie Price. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $15.99 (240p) ISBN 978-0-374-31775-1

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.)