ANGEL THIEVES
by
KATHI APPELT
Young Adult / Magical Realism / Historical / Contemporary
Publisher: Atheneum / Caitlyn Dlouhy Books
Publisher: Atheneum / Caitlyn Dlouhy Books
Date of Publication: March 12, 2019
Number of Pages: 336
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Scroll down for the giveaway!
An ocelot. A slave. An angel thief.
Multiple perspectives spanning across time are united through themes of freedom, hope, and faith in a most unusual and epic novel from Newbery Honor–winning author and National Book Award finalist Kathi Appelt.
Sixteen-year-old Cade Curtis is an angel thief. After his mother’s family rejected him for being born out of wedlock, he and his dad moved to the apartment above a local antique shop. The only payment the owner Mrs. Walker requests: marble angels, stolen from graveyards, for her to sell for thousands of dollars to collectors. But there’s one angel that would be the last they’d ever need to steal; an angel, carved by a slave, with one hand open and one hand closed. If only Cade could find it…
Zorra, a young ocelot, watches the bayou rush past her yearningly. The poacher who captured and caged her has long since lost her, and Zorra is getting hungrier and thirstier by the day. Trapped, she only has the sounds of the bayou for comfort—but it tells her help will come soon.
Before Zorra, Achsah, a slave, watched the very same bayou with her two young daughters. After the death of her master, Achsah is free, but she’ll be damned if her daughters aren’t freed with her. All they need to do is find the church with an angel with one hand open and one hand closed…
In a masterful feat, National Book Award Honoree Kathi Appelt weaves together stories across time, connected by the bayou, an angel, and the universal desire to be free.
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BRAZOS BOOKSTORE ◆ BLUE WILLOW BOOKSHOP ◆ BOOK PEOPLE
AMAZON ◆ BARNES AND NOBLE ◆ INDIEBOUND
BRAZOS BOOKSTORE ◆ BLUE WILLOW BOOKSHOP ◆ BOOK PEOPLE
AMAZON ◆ BARNES AND NOBLE ◆ INDIEBOUND
PRAISE FOR ANGEL THIEVES:
Spiritual, succinct, and emotionally gripping.
-- School Library Journal
A heartfelt love letter to Houston that acknowledges the bad parts of its history while uplifting the good. -- BCBB
Shows the best and worst sides of humanity and underscores the powerful force of the bayou, which both holds and erases secrets.
A heartfelt love letter to Houston that acknowledges the bad parts of its history while uplifting the good. -- BCBB
Shows the best and worst sides of humanity and underscores the powerful force of the bayou, which both holds and erases secrets.
-- Publishers Weekly
Narrative strands are like tributaries that begin as separate entities but eventually merge into a single thematic connection: that love, whether lost or found, is always powerful. -- Horn Book
Richly drawn and important. -- Booklist, starred review
Narrative strands are like tributaries that begin as separate entities but eventually merge into a single thematic connection: that love, whether lost or found, is always powerful. -- Horn Book
Richly drawn and important. -- Booklist, starred review
One
Small Sentence
Guest
Post by Kathi Appelt
I want to tell you a small
part of my experience of writing Angel Thieves. To a certain extent, all of my
books feel a bit slippery as they come into being, but this one was like trying
to walk a dozen cats on the ends of a dozen leashes. The various story lines
kept getting tangled up and twisted. There were moments when I just wanted to
toss it all, for sure. And just when I thought I had it in place, it slipped
away again.
In fact, the ARC (Advanced
Reader Copy) is basically draft #38 out of maybe 52 drafts? (I stopped counting
a year ago). Anyways, I made substantial changes to the manuscript after the ARC
came out, so if you happen to have one, use it to study and show how a book can
change from one draft to another, especially when it comes to the ending.
There are over
fifty-thousand words at play here. It took me three years to get those words
all arranged in just the right way. And yet . . .
Yet . . .
There was one sentence that
just kept eluding me. One critical sentence. Only three words long.
It first occurs on page 83
when my young protagonist Cade has just come face to face with his biological mother
for the first time. At six years old, the trauma of it was overwhelming and
Cade did the only thing he could think to do—ducked into the bathroom and
locked the door.
Minutes later, he hears his
dad Paul on the other side of the door, who tells him the best words ever:
“I’ll always be right here.” Of course, those are perfect words to say to a kid
who has just experienced a major moment in his life. They’re satisfying and
comforting and all of that. They work well in that particular time and space.
But fast forward ten years
and 213 pages. Now on page 296, Cade is sixteen, and he is the one who is in
the position of being the comforter. I wanted him to say those exact best words
ever, in an attempt to pull the story threads together. And while “I’ll always
be right here,” suffices, it’s just not exactly right.
My friends, that sentence
drove me nuts. I kept trying to massage it, to rub it into something more
pliable and that suited both instances more fully. I could not figure it out. I
kept changing it, kept trying other sentences, other words.
I knew what I wanted both
Paul and Cade to express, I knew what their hearts had to say, but the way to
say it kept slipping from my grasp. I can’t tell you how frustrating that was.
However, even more
frustrating was the moment when I realized the exact right sentence, because by
then it was too late. The book had already gone to the printer. I had this
eureka moment, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.
The good news is that my
wonderful editor, Caitlyn Dlouhy, was able to make the change for the audio
edition (which is brilliantly read by my daughter-in-law Laurel Kathleen), and
if the book is lucky enough to go to a second printing, then it’ll show up
then. But if it doesn’t, I hope you’ll write it in on pages 83 and 296.
“There’s love enough.” This
is what Paul should have said to Cade, which in turn Cade says to Zorra.
“There’s love enough.”
In so many ways, I feel like
that small, three-word sentence is what the entire book is about. It means that
when love is present, it doesn’t take mountains of it to create a miracle. It
doesn’t require quantification. Love is love is love. When it’s present,
there’s enough. And that’s what matters.
She has two grown children and lives in College Station, Texas, with her husband and their six cats. She serves as a faculty member at Vermont College of Fine Arts in their MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program.
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