A New Series: One Minute Reviews of
Books by Vermont Authors
Laura's column "One Minute Reviews" has appeared bi-weekly in Wilmington, Vermont's Deerfield Valley News since 2015. In April 2018, she found that no Vermont periodical consistently reviews all commercially published fiction and non-fiction by Vermont authors, so she started a series to fill that void. Published reviews from that series and some earlier reviews of local authors are listed with links to a scan of the printed copy. Reviews still in queue are listed without links until they appear in print.
The books reviewed in this series are available through Wilmington's Pettee Memorial Library, the Whitingham Free Public Library, and locally owned Bartleby's Books in Wilmington.
A #metoo Book for Teens
Katy Farber, What if it Wasn’t My Fault? Rootstock Publishing, 2026
Since the death of her beloved grandfather, teenaged Indie Watson has gradually become the “glue” in a once-close family that is falling apart. Her father, once supportive, now comes home from work, turns on TV football, and drinks beer after beer. Her football-playing brother Dylan has difficulties concentrating in school and has been failing classes; Indie makes sure he takes his medications. Her mother, a teacher devoted to helping other people’s children, is exhausted by her job and by parenting Indie’s toddler brother Dax; when she comes home on Fridays, she goes straight to bed, leaving Indie in charge. As the lone member of the family who has no problems in a small town whose gossip follows every slip by every family, Indie makes sure things are under control—including her stellar grades and her star-studded record on the high school’s girls’ soccer team.
Then one night Indie goes to a party—a first date with a boy she has known since kindergarten. Enjoying his company, she drinks seriously for the first time in her life ... and wakes up the next day, bruised, aching, and devastated by what she realizes has happened to her but unable to remember any of the details. Ashamed, humiliated, sick, she curls up in her room, obsessed by the shameful way she has let her family down, and by the texts that come streaming in on her phone. Looking around her darkened room, she feels she has become a “ghost girl” who has totally left behind the person she was. Except she can’t. When she tries going to school as usual, Boy X (as she renames him) is in her homeroom and her classes. Still miserable but a devoted soccer player, she sets up a team-mate’s goal—but then she sees Boy X’s friends sneering at her. That breaks her; she runs off the field and hides from what she is sure is her new reputation in town.
Katy Farber tells Indie’s story in poetry that catches the girl’s misery, shame, and inability to cope with her instinctive assumption that she is at fault for what has happened to her. She turns away from the well-meaning support of her outraged best friend; she feels guilty when she hears her brother has been suspended for fighting with Boy X; and she flees the sympathetic and experienced woman who, rather than pressing her, provides her cell phone number and assures Indie that she is not alone. But finally, Indie, shivering after slipping into the town’s river (was it slipping?), assembles enough confidence in herself to call—and with the timely help of the local hospital and the belated help of her family, redefines herself as a Survivor who understands that she is indeed not alone and not at fault.
Farber’s book is heartfelt, and it is sure to be a focal point for discussions among its teenaged audiences. The ragged free verse adopts Indie’s confused voice effectively, though occasionally readers may detect an adult voice behind the girl’s. The concluding fourth of the book loses part of its effectiveness by portraying Indie’s #metoo conversion quickly at the expense of some of its voice’s earlier power. But the point is clear, the story is compelling, and overall, this is going to be a book for teenagers to read and remember for years to come.