Sister Golden Hair

July 7, 2014
Steinke’s (Easter Everywhere) latest novel opens as 12-year-old Jesse’s father, an ex-Methodist minister, is settling the family in for a new life in Roanoke, Va. With a perpetually dissatisfied mother, a father tossed in the waves of spiritual uncertainty, and a little brother happily rooted in the childhood that Jessie is quickly leaving behind, she turns to the neighbors in her duplex community at Bent Tree for companionship and guidance. Jesse consults older women wise in the ways of dance and romance, peers well informed on superstitions, and Playboy Bunnies in an attempt to understand the budding sexuality pushing her into the uncharted territories of liberation and loneliness. Her treasures, like her copy of Big Book of Burial Rites and the Cher and David Bowie songs piping from the radio, are the endearing artifacts of a young girl struggling both to stand out and to fit in. Despite its lack of surprises, Jesses’s story is nevertheless convincing, filled with nostalgia for the early 1970s.

September 1, 2014
Steinke (Milk, 2005, etc.) ponders the nature of religious faith in this coming-of-age story about a defrocked New-Age minister's daughter's adjusting to her family's new life in suburban Virginia in the early 1970s.In 1972, 12-year-old Jesse moves with her parents and 4-year-old brother, Philip, from Philadelphia, where her father has once again been fired for his unconventional methods and beliefs as a Methodist minister, to Roanoke, Virginia, where he has found work as a counselor. While he is an intellectual idealist unable or unwilling to function in the practical world, Jesse's deeply frustrated, emotionally erratic mother craves respectability and material comfort. Their marriage seems unhappy to Jesse, but their basic decency shows in bits and pieces throughout the novel. Having settled into Bent Tree, an apartment complex where the motley mix of residents struggles to pay the rent, innocent yet precocious Jesse begins seventh grade desperate to fit in but also afraid of her body's pubescent changes. After popular Sheila rebuffs her, Jesse becomes soul mates with Jill, who believes her family has been cursed. Unfortunately true to Jill's beliefs, her alcoholic mother disappears, leaving Jill and her younger siblings to fend for themselves until someone (maybe Jesse's mom) calls in social services and Jill exits from Jesse's life. Three years later, Sheila, whose popularity has faded since a scandal surrounding her dad's sexuality, draws Jesse into her fantasy life involving Playboy Bunnies and her own incipient sadomasochism. Jesse also begins a relationship with potentially dangerous but pathetic bad-boy Dwayne. But by 10th grade, Jesse has turned into the accelerated student with smart friends she was always meant to be. Then Jill, now a devout born-again Christian, reappears to confuse and challenge the beliefs (or lack thereof) that Jesse's been struggling with all along. Steinke brings the world of Bent Tree to vivid life with a cast of secondary characters more sharply drawn than Jesse and particularly her parents, who are never quite fully realized on the page.

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Starred review from July 1, 2014

Told from the perspective of a former preacher's daughter who has moved three times in three years, this is Steinke's fourth (after Milk) and most autobiographical novel. It is also possibly the most accurate depiction of tween female experience this reviewer has read, a delight and a rare treat. In 1972, Jesse's parents settle in Roanoke, VA, in a duplex, much to the chagrin of her mother. Jesse is wise beyond her years and narrates the changing philosophical views of her father and the hysteria of her mother in a heartbreakingly grown-up manner. The novel follows her through the obsessive friendships with two girls from the neighborhood and a single mother whose son she babysits. It is also a snapshot of a society in upheaval, and the depiction of changing family values and popular culture through the eyes of a young girl is spot on. VERDICT Steinke writes moving passages on finding the spiritual in the everyday. While the prose is cerebral, the plot will also keep readers immersed. Highly recommended for all readers of literary fiction, even those who don't usually seek out coming-of-age stories.--Kate Gray, Worcester P.L., MA

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2014
With a title taken from a 1970s ear-worm of a song by the band America, it's no surprise that Steinke's (Easter Everywhere, 2007) new novel practically guarantees that a slow slide-guitar riff will play in the reader's mind as she re-creates that languid, deflated decade. But the story is not fueled by nostalgia alone. Steinke's narrator, Jesse, is both unforgettably unique and a quintessential adolescent girl, with a view of herself shaped overwhelmingly by those around her in the duplexes of Roanoke, Virginia. These include her best friend, Jill, neglected by her mother and obsessed with ritual; neighborhood bully Dwayne, with his gift for school-bus obscenities and tellingly coiffed hair; and various regretful adults who drift unreliably in the background. Jesse's naive admiration for each and her chameleonlike reaction to whomever she attaches herself to create a painfully true account of a tough phase of life made more so by the disillusions of the time. But as Jesse observes these characters' hopelessness, she herself becomes more definedperhaps more the guitarist than the girl in the song.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)