Read This Book…

Frankie is a bored teenager in 1996 when she meets Zeke, who is spending the summer in her tiny Southern town because his parents’ marriage has hit a rough patch. Frankie and Zeke have an instant connection that’s only a little romantic but a lot to do with the fact that they’re both aspiring artists who want to create something memorable. Hours holed up in Frankie’s room leads to a collaboration that unexpectedly takes their town by storm, leading to a cultural phenomenon that will go down in history as the Coalfield Panic. Twenty years later, Frankie is a semi-famous author who receives a phone call from a reporter who thinks she might have found a link between Frankie and the panic…sending Frankie on a journey of reckoning through the past.

I really loved how this book unfolded, and how I immediately was drawn to Frankie. She is a misfit 16 year old who wants so much more out of life than what she’s got, and feels pretty trapped by circumstance. Her yearning to create something memorable and amazing comes to fruition in a wholly unexpected way, and both she and Zeke have to reckon with very different reactions to the panic and fascination that their creation brings about. I thought that Wilson did such a great job of exploring exactly how a small Southern town in the ’90s might react if a strange poster with a bizarre message started appearing everywhere, and it was really fun to see a mystery begin from the inside. Interspersed between the chapters set in the ’90s are chapters from Frankie’s adult life, where she reckons with the fact that she created a social phenomenon but no one knows about it, not even her family. This was such a weird, big-hearted novel about art and aspiration, and dealing with the consequences of your actions, and it packs a big emotional punch.