Gorgeous and honest and heartrending. In compassionate, clear-eyed prose, Shae falls in love, gives birth, and descends into a tunnel of opioid addiction in rural Appalachia. Maren masterfully balances hope and despair on both community and personal levels, examining how identity—especially as someone who is young and queer—is shaped by place and its people as much as by the choices we make (and the ones we don’t).
Shae by Mesha Maren, (List Price: $28, Algonquin Books, 9781643755663, May 2024)
Reviewed by MIRANDA SANCHEZ, Epilogue: Books Chocolate Brews in , North Carolina