Compound Fracture

Miles is a trans teen growing up in West Virginia’s mine country. And if that weren’t a difficult-enough life, he’s also part of a family that’s been eyeballs deep in a generations-old Hatfield/McCoy type battle with the local law enforcement family. When Miles tries to help his family fight back against the corruption aimed right at them, he gets assaulted in the woods one night by the sheriff’s son and his lackeys, and things just get worse from there, until one of the lackeys winds up accidentally dead and Miles finds himself with all sorts of secrets he needs to keep.

I’ve loved every one of White’s books I’ve read, but this one is the absolute best so far. His usual metaphor of society seeing trans (and autistic) show more people as monsters morphs here into trans people as folk heroes, and he couches it within a story about social injustice and the power of the working class fighting back, while wrapping it in Appalachian folklore and culture. It’s dark and bloody and gorgeous, with some twists that made me shout “YES!” out loud in the library as I listened while packing up the day’s book cargo and then shush myself. It’s so, so good, and I can’t wait to see what amazing stories White still has to show us. show less

Real Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Bestselling and award-winning author Andrew Joseph White returns with a queer Appalachian thriller, that pulls no punches, for teens who see the failures in our world and are pushing for radical change.

A gut-wrenching story following a trans autistic teen who survives an attempted murder, only to be drawn into the generational struggle between the rural poor and those who exploit them.

On the night Miles Abernathy—sixteen-year-old socialist and proud West Virginian—comes out as trans to his parents, he sneaks off to a party, carrying evidence that may finally turn the tide of the blood feud plaguing Twist Creek: Photos that prove the county’s Sheriff Davies was responsible for the show more so-called “accident” that injured his dad, killed others, and crushed their grassroots efforts to unseat him.

The feud began a hundred years ago when Miles’s great-great-grandfather, Saint Abernathy, incited a miners’ rebellion that ended with a public execution at the hands of law enforcement. Now, Miles becomes the feud’s latest victim as the sheriff’s son and his friends sniff out the evidence, follow him through the woods, and beat him nearly to death.

In the hospital, the ghost of a soot-covered man hovers over Miles’s bedside while Sheriff Davies threatens Miles into silence. But when Miles accidentally kills one of the boys who hurt him, he learns of other folks in Twist Creek who want out from under the sheriff’s heel. To free their families from this cycle of cruelty, they’re willing to put everything on the line—is Miles?

A visceral, unabashedly political page-turner that won’t let you go until you’ve reached the end, Compound Fracture is not for the faint of heart, but it is for every reader who is ready to fight for a better world.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: If ever a book was well-placed to meet its times, it's this trans YA story of rebellion turned existential.

There are so many stories that feature parents of trans kids that reject and demean their children that it felt very warming for Miles to have befuddled, but loving and willing to learn, parents that I was ready to five-star the reading experience. Even his grandparents weren't rejecting, as so many trans kids experience. The latter were even able to see Miles' outing as the huge emotional violation it was and not blame him for the violence that followed. It was outstanding, and I really hope more trans kids than ever experience that in their lives. Sounds more and more five-starry, right?

Didn't *quite* work out that way....

That's really down to my feeling that the politics were polemical not organic to Miles. Being a socialist firebrand in West Virginia is as risky as being trans; so why was one on display, and why the political one? Given the terrible suffering Miles endures in the course of the book, why was one so impersonal the choice he's depicted as making the one he's going to suffer for? Why fuss about identity politics in the middle of class war, a character asks...I wondered why class warfare does not include bodily autonomy before a political screed.

Miles' exploration of what masculinity means in his milieu is what earned back all but a token bit of a star. This issue is absolutely wonderfully handled. Miles is a man; Miles isn't most of the stereotypically Appalachian/Southern man-coded things, eg violent and aggressive, but is figuring out what that's going to look like. His own dad's experiences in the story, as a victim of male aggression to the point of disability, seemed to me to set the stakes for Miles pretty starkly.

It ends up being a cavil in the face of the story's many strengths. I hope the whole of West Virginia will read it, if only to see what critique from a place of love for a shared home looks like. It's a home that gets huge amounts of criticism from a place of contempt heaped on it from outside.

It's good to have a corrective to the attitude but not the substance of the critics. show less

Miles Abernathy is a trans kid in Twist Creek County; a place located deep within West Virginia and enriched in the history of the local coal mine and the miner's union. But if being trans in the Appalachia wasn't hard enough, he's also an Abernathy, a family involved with a generations-old family feud with the Davies. One night, he sneaks out with photos of a car accident that ruined the lives of three whole families and was caused by none other than Sherriff Davies. He gives them to his friend, Cooper O'Brian, at a graduation party, only to go home and nearly be beaten to death by Noah Davies and his gang. Tainted with grief, fear, and anger, Miles struggles to get back at the Davies' as well with getting his family to understand his show more identity. And then Eddie Ruckles, one of Noah's goons, dies, and Miles and Cooper decide to end things once and for all by killing the remainder of the group.
This book was so good that it got me sunburnt twice while reading it on our patio. I love the setting, the characters, the premise. And while these characters and their history may have been fictional, definitely everything in this book was inspired by true historical events. It does a really good job of connecting the reasons miners united to strike to today with the current political climate. It's really hard to describe everything that this book means to me, and I hope to adapt it into a film if no one does before me. show less

I was excited about this one and thrilled to get an advanced copy. The history and culture of Appalachia interest me a lot, in part because of my proximity to it. There’s been a history of socialist movements and worker solidarity in many areas that still permeates the culture, but also a strongly conservative lean in the impoverished rural communities that could (and have in patches of history) benefit most from these movements. The book description seemed to promise a nuanced exploration of these elements without glorification or erasure of the bigotry just because the people perpetuating it are victims in their own right. The cycle of violence, and the lofty ideals struggling to manifest in a dirty reality, all weaved through a show more thriller/horror plot line literally haunted by the bloody, cyclic history (not to mention the bonus of exploring trans and queer culture and identity in this environment through a gay, aromantic trans protagonist), what a pitch.
It just didn’t fully stick the landing in my opinion. While Miles has a strong sense of his principles, politically, and awareness of the large-scale issues in his community, the morality and motivations for the violence done in the story proper by him and his generation were shallower. A lot of complexity was left to the past and to infodumps about history, culture, and ideologies, rather than deeply integrated into the narrative.
It came to a head with the ending where I felt the underlying problems of Miles’ community that went beyond the sheriff and his abuse of power were somewhat brushed off. All the handful of bad people who were really seduced by violence (unlike Miles who only liked it a little) were gone and so the conservative populace would rally behind the socialists and queers? I know that’s not exactly what the ending wants to say. It’s trying to be a hard-won, but hopeful look at the cycle of violence finally ending and a marginalized person being able to carve out space for himself in a home he cares for. But (despite the literal gore and death) it was maybe too clean for a story that paid lip service to many complexities. There are acknowledgments of the racism, misogyny, queerphobia, and all the hatred, trauma, and pain that go far beyond and far deeper than the feud that gets the main focus and the resolution in the end. With all that put out in the open earlier in the story, but not worked on, I’m wondering where it all went.
Sometimes I think I’m asking the wrong thing from a story when I’m unsatisfied with the direction or the ending, but in this case, I do believe I wanted mostly the same thing the story was trying to give, I just wanted it to go deeper and to give more.
There was a lot to like — the portrayal of the setting, the political awareness, Miles’ journey to understanding himself as autistic, his pride in his home and insistence on making it better, the realistic writing of his family’s imperfect yet unconditional love — but also potential left untouched. show less

After he’s sure they’re asleep for the night, 16-year-old Miles Abernathy makes two important
choices: he comes out to his parents as trans, and he sneaks out to give a friend photographic evidence that Sheriff Davies is a murderer. The sheriff’s son finds out about the photos, so he and his two goons beat Miles unconscious and leave him for dead in the woods.
This violence has been par for the course between the Abernathys and Davieses for a century. In
1917, Saint Abernathy led a bloody miners’ rebellion that ended in his public execution by his Sheriff
Davies. The two families have been destroying each other ever since.
When Miles wakes up at the hospital, he is visited by the coal-dusted ghost of an early 20th
century miner. A show more ghost that Miles is, impossibly, absolutely certain he knows.
Compound Fracture is about generational violence, how absolute power corrupts absolutely,
truth, and how communities either fall apart or come together.
Be aware this story handles topics that some readers may find disturbing. Content warnings include: graphic violence (including police brutality, child murder, off-page past revenge killing of a pet), internalized arophobia, transphobia (deadnaming, misgendering, public outing), on-page butchering of a deer for food, ableism (including discussion about discrimination arising from disfigurement), opioids (use, dependency, withdrawal), and vomiting. show less

One of the best books I’ve read in a while, Compound Fracture is quick-paced, dark, but filled with a strong sense of humanity. I adored the main character, he was human, flawed in the way we all are, but fighting for what he believed in. It was wonderful to see a trans main character, especially one who was aromantic but not necessarily asexual, and I adored the autistic representation as well. I couldn’t put the book down, the way Andrew writes draws you in, and enraptures your feelings. I am so glad to have read this book, and I plan to read his other. books very soon.

Deceptively brutal and gory, yet both made me sympathetic to the teens who killed in the story. They had been brutalized and their families had a long history of suffering at the hands of the corrupt and ruthless. This is one of those tales where there's no happy ending, just a whimper in hopes of survival at the end. Great cast and impossible to put down.