Dust Girl

Callie LeRoux seems to be stuck in Slow Run, Kansas helping her mother run a hotel that hasn't seen much business since the Dust Bowl's arrival. Even though Callie suffers from dust pneumonia her mother refuses to leave for a more prosperous climate, insisting that she needs to stay there until Callie's long-missing father returns for them. But when Callie's mother disappears in a dust storm Callie knows she has to take matters into her own hands. Soon Callie learns a few details of her past that she never would have imagined: Her estranged father was a fairy prince, and warring fae factions are all very interested in finding Callie one way or another. As Callie tries to escape these dangerous fairies and find her mother she teams up with Jack, a boy living as a hobo with a mysterious past of his own. The two attempt to make their way to California, where Callie thinks her mother might have been taken, but Kansas proves to have plenty of dangers for them to deal with first.

There is quite a bit to like in Sarah Zettel's Dust Girl, which is a unique take on faerie mythology. The Dust Bowl setting is certainly an interesting one, and it was fascinating to see how different elements from this region and time period were incorporated into the novel. Especially interesting was the way that music from the period was worked in, both as a way of enhancing the setting and as a part of this world's faerie lore as music turns out to be one of the faerie's sources of power. Callie was a fun character to follow and I appreciated the way that she struggled to make sense of her mixed background - both before and after she learns of her fae heritage.

Overall Grade: A

Dust Girl if the first book in the American Fairy Trilogy. No official word on when the next book will be published, but my money is on sometime during the summer of 2013.