SPLIT

When 16-year-old Jace is kicked out of his Chicago home, he shows up—with a swollen, bloody face—on his older brother's doorstep in Albuquerque. Joshua Swanson depicts Jace's toughness and frustration with an edge of bitterness that makes sense when the plot reveals his guilt over having “abandoned” his mother at home, where she serves as his father’s punching bag. And there's something else—shame when he refers to an unresolved relationship with a past girlfriend. The power of story and narration comes in the hero's tortured struggles to resolve his haunting, brutal past and complex relationships, as well as his own violent tendencies and faltering attempts to make a new future. S.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine [Published: JUNE 2010]