The Rust Maidens

October 8, 2018
Kiste (Pretty Marys All in a Row) nimbly invokes Rust Belt frustrations in this haunting fantasy set on working-class Denton Street in Cleveland, Ohio. Phoebe Shaw, 18, is “a bad girl with good grades” who’s bound for university as an escape from the dying steel mill suburb where she grew up. But when a strange affliction seizes the other girls on her street, including her cousin Jacqueline, Phoebe discovers escaping won’t be easy. The girls are changing: underneath their skin, their innards have all turned to rust. Alternating, perhaps needlessly, between the harrowing past and the stifling present, Phoebe recounts the failure of the steel workers’ latest strike, which has echoes in the neighborhood’s ruthless oppression of the increasingly powerful Rust Maidens. There’s also a romantic subplot, but it falls flat amid the turmoil. Kiste focuses on demonstrating the indignities young women may suffer when they defy society’s rules defining what they’re allowed to be. Despite its flaws, the Rust Maidens’ story is very much worth reading.

October 15, 2018
In the summer of 1980, the future looked bleak in Cleveland. Mills were closing, leaving many unemployed, and the lake was so polluted it could catch on fire. But to new high-school graduate Phoebe, the main problem is that in her neighborhood, young girls?many of them her friends?are turning into grotesquely beautiful beasts. Phoebe recounts this strange tale in 1980 and in the present, allowing readers to see Phoebe struggle with the events of that horrifying summer both as they happened and in the far-reaching aftermath. Award-winning short story writer Kiste (And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe, 2017) makes her full-length debut with this dramatic and absorbing novel full of compelling contractions?it's realistic yet supernatural, terrifying yet beautiful, infuriating yet redemptive. This is a tale of friendship, monsters, and growing up, a lyrical and character-centered story filled with danger and horrible consequences following in the tradition of horror with a strong coming-of-age theme as seen most recently in Children of the Dark? by Jonathan Janz (2016), Disappearance at Devil's Rock by Paul Tremblay (2016), and Hex? by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (2016).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)