Andrew Joseph White

Bestselling and award-winning author Andrew Joseph White returns with a queer Appalachian thriller, that pulls no punches, for teens who see the failures in our world and are pushing for radical change. A gut-wrenching story following a trans autistic teen who survives an attempted murder, only to be drawn into the generational struggle between the rural poor and those who exploit them. On the night Miles Abernathy—sixteen-year-old socialist and proud West Virginian—comes out as trans to his parents, he sneaks off to a party, carrying evidence that may finally turn the tide of the blood feud plaguing Twist Creek: Photos that prove the county’s Sheriff Davies was responsible for the so-called “accident” that injured his dad, killed others, and crushed their grassroots efforts to unseat him. The feud began a hundred years ago when Miles’s great-great-grandfather, Saint Abernathy, incited a miners’ rebellion that ended with a public execution at the hands of law enforcement. Now, Miles becomes the feud’s latest victim as the sheriff’s son and his friends sniff out the evidence, follow him through the woods, and beat him nearly to death. In the hospital, the ghost of a soot-covered man hovers over Miles’s bedside while Sheriff Davies threatens Miles into silence. But when Miles accidently kills one of the boys who hurt him, he learns of other folks in Twist Creek who want out from under the sheriff’s heel. To free their families from this cycle of cruelty, they’re willing to put everything on the line—is Miles? A visceral, unabashedly political page-turner that won’t let you go until you’ve reached the end, Compound Fracture is not for the faint of heart, but it is for every reader who is ready to fight for a better world.

Compound Fracture

(Bre)anne✨

That’s what I call myself. A socialist. Because my great-great-grandfather was, and he was a socialist for a damn reason.

Good thing I was raised to grit my teeth.

“I—“ I start shakily. “I don’t like the word 

.” The echo of my voice from the speaker confuses me. It’s higher than it should be, different than in my head. “I guess it implies surviving something terrible is a, a moral issue. A reward for having a lot of willpower or inner strength or whatever. When it ain’t. It’s luck.”

Cassidy Nolan

When the sheriff of Twist Creek County—and all those other sons of bitches, the Baldwin-Felts agents and bloodthirsty strikebreakers—finally caught my great-great-grandfather and dragged his ass up from the mine to make a spectacle of his execution, they killed him by hammering a railroad spike through his mouth.

Deer don’t do hunting season, rats don’t do traps, and I don’t do parties.

“It’s Miles. I’m trans.” The words are strange coming out of my mouth, like it’s absurd that five syllables could carry so much weight.

I don’t get the appeal. Still, I memorized the symptoms. It’s all stereotypical. Butterflies in the stomach, an adrenaline rush at the idea of whoever, getting nervous and stammering, that sort of thing.

I dunno. That sounds like a fear response to me.

In the stories I’ve read online, parents seem obsessed with performing their grief about a child’s transition. 

Don’t you know how hard this is for us?

 And you know what, fine! Have feelings about it! There are a lot of things to have feelings about when your kid is trans! But don’t have them 

Because my great-great-grandfather tortured strikebreakers, and my great-grandmother burned her sheriff alive, and Papaw shot a man right on his front porch, and I’m pissed.

Most people who end up on Twist Creek’s bad side just leave. I get it, but at the same time, it’s kind of cowardly if you ask me. Or I’m too stubborn to up and leave.

Compound Fracture quotes

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