We Deserve Monuments
by Jas Hammonds
High School    Roaring Brook    384 pp.
11/22    9781250816559    $18.99
e-book ed.  9781250816566    $10.99

Seventeen-year-old Avery is convinced her family has made a huge mistake in moving from Washington, DC, to Bardell County, Georgia. Biracial and queer, Avery is not sure how she will be received in her mother’s Southern hometown—and if her grandmother is any indication, acceptance won’t be easy. Elderly, ornery, and dying of cancer, Mama Letty is caustic toward everyone, and neither she nor Avery’s mother will give an explanation for their strained relationship. Plunged into mysteries surrounding her relatives, Avery is expected to follow the family motto and “focus forward” while remaining frustrated that no one will provide answers about their past. Two classmates, an attractive Black next-door neighbor and the white heir of the richest family in town, encourage Avery to build a bond with her grandmother—and as she does, she discovers that all of their families’ pasts are intertwined. The novel addresses issues of race and sexuality head-on, along with questions of who should be memorialized. Third-person historical accounts of Bardell County are interspersed within Avery’s first-person narration, and the pacing and structure lend themselves to a dynamic and astonishing conclusion.

From the March/April 2023 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.