PRAISE FOR A CATALOG OF BURNT OBJECTS
“Smart and moving.” —Kirkus (starred review)
“Heart-wrenching and lyrical.” —Jeff Zentner, author of In The Wild Light
“You can’t help but fall in love with the world inside this book.” —Helena Fox, author of How It Feels to Float
“A thoughtful, hopeful tight-rope walk between first loss and first love.” —Daisy Garrison, author of Six More Months of June
The story of a girl struggling to figure out her estranged brother, a new love, and her own life just as wildfires beset her small California town—by the acclaimed author of As Many Nows as I Can Get, whose hometown, Paradise, California, was devastated by the 2018 Camp Fire.
Seventeen-year-old Caprice wants to piece her family back together now that her older brother has returned home, even as she resents that he ever broke them apart. Just as she starts to get a new footing—falling in love for the first time, uncertainly mending her traumatized relationship with her brother, completing the app that will win her a college scholarship and a job in tech—wildfires strike Sierra, her small California town, forcing her to reckon with a future that is impossible to predict. A love story of many kinds and a reflection of the terrifying, heartbreaking events of Paradise, California, where the author grew up, this is a tale that looks at what is lost and discovers what remains, and how a family can be nearly destroyed again and again, and still survive.
Shana Youngdahl is a poet, professor, and the author of the acclaimed novel As Many Nows as I Can Get, a Seventeen Best Book of the Year, a New York Public Library Top Ten Best Book of the Year, and a Kirkus Best Book of the Year. Shana hails from Paradise, California, devastated by the 2018 Camp Fire, which stirred her to write this novel. She now lives with her husband, two daughters, dog, and cat in Missouri where she is Associate Professor in the MFA in Writing Program at Lindenwood University.