Novels to occupy the young adult reader

Children's author and editor Nick Lake wanted to send a message to teens with his Young Adult novel, “In Darkness,” (Bloomsbury, 2012, ages 14 and up, $17.99) with his idea that, “ ... because we circle the sun - there's always light on the other side of darkness and you don't have to wait for very long for darkness to be replaced by light.” In other words, teens can move past bad things that happen to them just as his 15-year-old protagonist, Shorty, does by the end of Lake's gripping 2013 Printz Award-winning novel.

Set in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, Shorty is trapped in utter darkness amid the rubble of a broken hospital, in a broken city, in a broken country. He, too, is broken, physically and spiritually, from both witnessing his father's murder and learning that his twin sister, Marguerite, was taken by a rival gang five years ago. His consequent evolution into a chimere (gangster) in Site Soleil, one of the most impoverished and violent places on Earth, leads to rage and hopelessness expressed in killing others while constantly searching for his sister who held the other half of his soul. Together, Shorty explains that he and Marguerite were Marassa, maji - magic. Marguerite was famous for kindness - saving lowly things like rats and even bigger, more impossible things like a sick baby from the trash that no one else would care about, “unless they were going to grind it up for vodou or something.” Through Shorty's regrets, we learn much about his impoverished country and the truths he finally faces.

Interwoven with Shorty's story is also Toussaint L'Ouverture's, a crucial historical figure in Haiti's history and struggle for independence from the French in 1804. At age 53, this former slave taught himself to read, write, and lead his country in a revolution to abolish slavery, only to die at Napoleon's orders in a French dungeon. This dual viewpoint of “In Darkness” enriches the book with historical background and a sympathetic understanding of Haiti's ancestry. By book's end, Shorty and Toussaint's souls merge in time and space, allowing for some hope to take over the darkness.

Another recently-celebrated young adult novel is the 2013 Edgar Award Winner and 2013 Printz Award Honor, “Code Name Verity,” by Elizabeth Wein (Disney-Hyperion, 2012, ages 14 and up, $16.99), which tells a fascinating and heartbreaking story of friendship, courage, and espionage in dual-narration by two women serving in war-torn Europe during World War II. Although emotionally difficult in places, it is exquisitely written and well worth coming to know these brave, intelligent characters.

The first two-thirds of the book is told by Queenie, a Scottish spy caught in German-occupied France and held captive for questioning and torture. Her narration unfolds as a written “confession” where we learn of her Nazi captors and what she has endured, her wealthy upbringing in Scotland, her training as a spy, and the story of how she met her best friend, Maddie, the pilot who was flying her over France when the plane malfunctioned. What makes her portion even more suspenseful, tense and mysterious beyond constant questions of “Will she get out of there? Will she live or die?” is that, as an unreliable narrator, we don't know what is truth or what is fiction in her confession. Answers are found, though, in Maddie's narration portion in the book's final third. Reading to the end, Wein's artistic mastery becomes clearer and clearer, as well as the fate of these two remarkable women.

Wein's author's note shares that she is a pilot who wanted to write a war story about a woman pilot. Her research led to the plausibility of women pilots and spies in World War II, granting her the opportunity to give those brave women a stoic and valiant voice in an unforgettable story.

Wendy Henrichs is a children's author living in Iowa City.