"...a good story doesn't just copy life, it pushes back on it."

This book was painful to read. I had to keep putting it down. Yet it was exquisite, and Barbara Kingsolver's writing is unlike anyone else's out there.

This book digs its fingernails beneath poverty, foster care, and the drug crisis, and overturns it to put all its ugliness on display. Like Charles Dickens, who inspired it, Kingsolver doesn't shy away from the harshness of life, doesn't rub your face in it, but dares you not to look away - forces you to see the humanity in the slums.

At its heart, a boy unwanted by everyone, but that you'll fall in love with through his story.