Maladaptation

Sixteen-year-old Marley Kurtz is an incurable bookworm who is sent to a program for "maladapted" youth in Loweville, Colorado after his parents discover he has been having an affair with a man forty-three years his senior. Once there, Marley befriends the wry yet optimistic Missy, who is fifteen and pregnant in the lowest town on earth, and falls in love with Jesse, an ice-eyed sociopath with an outlaw for a father and a corpse for a mother. As the stress of the summer causes Marley's physical and mental health to decline, it is unclear which of his new friends has the worst influence on him, or whether the instruction of a small town's Baptist-run therapy group will do more harm than good to everyone involved.

The voice and chaos of Marley Kurtz's life swept me along; I could not resist turning pages and seeing what delicious craziness happened next to this kid. L.A. Fields is the suffragette mouthpiece of gay boys suffering. --Steve Berman, Andre Norton Award finalist and author of Vintage, A Ghost Story

This story touched my soul, and it is without any hesitation that I offer my full and most wholehearted recommendation. My only regret is that I am merely empowered to award it only five stars. --Rainbow Reviews