It's not just that Liberty Briscoe feels like an outsider in Ebbotsville, Kentucky. She expected it wouldn't be easy to move from the city to her granny's farm during her junior year of high school. Still, Liberty can't shake the feeling that something's not quite right. Everyone says the water's safe, yet nobody drinks it. When Granny becomes sick, like so many others in town, Liberty starts to wonder about the water, the people who tested it, and the coal mining company that took the top off Tanner's Peak. Now, Liberty must follow her instincts to uncover secrets, despite those who think she's crazy to ask questions, including her own boyfriend.

It's not just that Liberty Briscoe feels like an outsider in Ebbotsville, Kentucky. She expected it wouldn't be easy to move from the city to her granny's farm during her junior year of high school. Still, Liberty can't shake the feeling that something's not quite right. Everyone says the water's safe, yet nobody drinks it. When Granny becomes sick, like so many others in town, Liberty starts to wonder about the water, the people who tested it, and the coal mining company that took the top off Tanner's Peak. Now, Liberty must follow her instincts to uncover secrets, despite those who think she's crazy to ask questions, including her own boyfriend.

With her mother facing prison time for a violent political protest, seventeen-year-old Liberty Briscoe has no choice but to leave her Washington, DC, apartment  and take a bus to Ebbottsville, Kentucky, to live with her granny. There she can at least finish high school and put some distance between herself and her mother --- or her former mother, as she calls her. But Ebbottsville isn’t the same as Liberty remembers, and it’s not just because the top of Tanner’s Peak has been blown away to mine for coal.

Half the county is out of work, an awful lot of people in town seem to be sick, and the tap water is bright orange --- the same water the officials claim is safe. And when Granny’s lingering cold turns out to be something much worse, Liberty wonders if somebody at the mine is hiding the truth about the water. She starts to investigate and is soon plunged into a world of secrets, lies, threats, and danger. Her search for answers and justice lead to even tougher questions --- should she turn to violence and end up like her mother? Give up her quest for the sake of keeping the peace? Or keep fighting until the mine is shut down for good?

Everyone knows the legends about the cursed girl --- Isabel, the one the senoras whisper about. They say she has green skin and grass for hair, and she feeds on the poisonous plants that fill her family’s Caribbean island garden. Seventeen-year-old Lucas lives on the mainland most of the year but spends summers with his hotel-developer father in Puerto Rico. He’s grown up hearing stories about the cursed girl, and he wants to believe in Isabel and her magic. When letters from Isabel begin mysteriously appearing in his room the same day his new girlfriend disappears, Lucas turns to Isabel for answers.

Everyone knows the legends about the cursed girl --- Isabel, the one the senoras whisper about. They say she has green skin and grass for hair, and she feeds on the poisonous plants that fill her family’s Caribbean island garden. Seventeen-year-old Lucas lives on the mainland most of the year but spends summers with his hotel-developer father in Puerto Rico. He’s grown up hearing stories about the cursed girl, and he wants to believe in Isabel and her magic. When letters from Isabel begin mysteriously appearing in his room the same day his new girlfriend disappears, Lucas turns to Isabel for answers.

In this stunning debut, legends collide with reality when a boy is swept into the magical, dangerous world of a girl filled with poison.
 
Everyone knows the legends about the cursed girl --- Isabel, the one the senoras whisper about. They say she has green skin and grass for hair, and she feeds on the poisonous plants that fill her family’s Caribbean island garden. Some say she can grant wishes; some say her touch can kill.

Seventeen-year-old Lucas lives on the mainland most of the year but spends summers with his hotel-developer father in Puerto Rico. He’s grown up hearing stories about the cursed girl, and he wants to believe in Isabel and her magic. When letters from Isabel begin mysteriously appearing in his room the same day his new girlfriend disappears, Lucas turns to Isabel for answers--and finds himself lured into her strange and enchanted world. But time is running out for the girl filled with poison, and the more entangled Lucas becomes with Isabel, the less certain he is of escaping with his own life.

A FIERCE AND SUBTLE POISON beautifully blends magical realism with a page-turning mystery and a dark,  starcrossed romance --- all delivered in lush, urgent prose.

“A breathtaking story in which myths come to frightening life and buried wishes might actually come true. This is a hypnotic debut by a remarkable talent.” --- Nova Ren Suma, author of THE WALLS AROUND US and IMAGINARY GIRLS

On Haven, a six-mile long, half-mile-wide stretch of barrier island, Mira Banul and her Year-Rounder friends have proudly risen to every challenge. But then a superstorm defies all predictions and devastates the island, upending all logic and stranding Mira's mother and brother on the mainland. Nothing will ever be the same. A stranger appears in the wreck of Mira's home. A friend obsessed with vanishing disappears. As the mysteries deepen, Mira must find the strength to carry on --- to somehow hold her memories in place while learning to trust a radically reinvented future.

On Haven, a six-mile long, half-mile-wide stretch of barrier island, Mira Banul and her Year-Rounder friends have proudly risen to every challenge. But then a superstorm defies all predictions and devastates the island, upending all logic and stranding Mira's mother and brother on the mainland. Nothing will ever be the same. A stranger appears in the wreck of Mira's home. A friend obsessed with vanishing disappears. As the mysteries deepen, Mira must find the strength to carry on --- to somehow hold her memories in place while learning to trust a radically reinvented future.

On Haven, a six-mile long, half-mile-wide stretch of barrier island, Mira Banul and her Year-Rounder friends have proudly risen to every challenge. But then a superstorm defies all predictions and devastates the island, upending all logic and stranding Mira's mother and brother on the mainland. Nothing will ever be the same. A stranger appears in the wreck of Mira's home. A friend obsessed with vanishing disappears. As the mysteries deepen, Mira must find the strength to carry on --- to somehow hold her memories in place while learning to trust a radically reinvented future. Gripping and poetic, THIS IS THE STORY OF YOU is about the beauty of nature and the power of family, about finding hope in the wake of tragedy and recovery in the face of overwhelming loss.