by Han Nolan
HN: Every reader comes to a book with their own history and will respond to the book according to that history. I would want my readers to take away from this exploration whatever they need. I don't create a story to teach a certain lesson to my readers. I create a story to explore a certain truth about life.
Q: Where did the idea for a vision of Jesus in a chair come from?
HN: I had heard a story about a man who was dying. He was in the hospital and he had an empty chair next to his bed. The nurses used to see him talking to it, and he claimed he was talking to Jesus. When he died, the nurses found him draped over that chair. That story touched me so much I just had to use it somehow.
Q: What kind of neighborhood did you grow up in? Have you ever lived in a small town like Casper, Alabama?
HN: I've lived in a small town but not that small. My high school wasn't very big and neither was my church, so I knew what it was like to feel that everyone knew me and my business. But most of the feel of Send Me Down a Miracle comes from the time I spent with my relatives in Dothan. I loved going down there and listening to all the family stories. No one can tell stories better than a Southerner.
Q: Many times Charity must choose to stay and fight or to run away. Why did you choose to explore this struggle?
HN: Because it interests me. We're all tempted to run away when things get tough. We are physiologically created that way. We sense danger and we know to run. Charity's mother ran away, Adrienne ran away. It seems like the easy way out of a situation, but as anyone knows who has tried it, you run away and then end up creating that same situation all over again. You learn you can't really run away. I wanted to explore what happens when you stay and fight, when you face the hard stuff.
Q: Charity finds herself disagreeing with the father she previously idolized. What attracted you to explore the complex relationship between father and daughter?
HN: I love exploring relationships between people, what makes people do and say the things they do, what makes a good father-daughter relationship. Actually, I just love exploring human nature. I guess that's because it is so complex. People fascinate me.
Also by Han Nolan
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER
Dancing on the Edge
A girl teeters on the edge of insanity.
Miracle McCloy has always known that there is something different about her. Gigi, her clairvoyant grandmother, won't let her forget that she had been pulled from the womb of a dead woman—a "miracle" birth—and that she expects Miracle to be a prodigy, much like Dane, the girl's brooding novelist father.
Having been raised according to a set of mystical rules and beliefs, Miracle is unable to cope in the real world. Lost in a desperate dance among lit candles, Miracle sets herself afire and is hospitalized. There, she undertakes a painful struggle to take charge of her life.
An ALA Best Book for Young Adults
A Booklist Editors' Choice
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
A New York Public Library Book
for the Teen Age
*"Masterful."
—School Library Journal (starred review)
*"Intense, exceptionally well-written."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
*"Compelling."
—Booklist (starred review)
Born Blue
She has no last name.
She has no real home. But she has a dream.
Janie ... Leshaya ... whatever she's called ... she's a survivor.
Rescued from the brink of death, this child of a heroin addict has seen it all: revolving foster homes, physical abuse, an unwanted pregnancy. Now her childhood is coming to an end, and she is determined to make a life for herself by doing the only thing that makes her feel whole ... singing.
Can this girl, born to a life of hardship, find the strength and courage to break away from her past and become the legend she is meant to be?
An ALA Best Book for Young Adults
A Junior Library Guild Selection
A New York Public Library Book
for the Teen Age
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
*"Raw, rough, and riveting ... Superb."
—School Library Journal (starred review)
*"Genuinely moving."
—The Bulletin
*"Powerful and gut-wrenching."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
A Face in Every Window
Life spins out of control in an instant.
JP's once safe and secure world quickly unravels with the death of his beloved grandmother. Grandma Mary had always been the guiding hand of the O'Brien family, lovingly raising his mentally challenged Pap and allowing Mam to remain free of adult responsibility.
Without Grandma Mary, nothing goes smoothly. Things only get worse when Mam wins a farmhouse in an essay contest and insists on sharing her good fortune with the neighborhood outcasts. As JP sees both Pap and himself being replaced in mother's life, his anger takes over.
National Book Award-winning author Han Nolan skillfully draws readers into JP's life and challenges them to experience both his loneliness and his strength as he struggles to learn what it means to forgive.
A New York Public Library Book
for the Teen Age
*"Uplifting, intriguing, and memorable."
—Booklist (starred review)
*"Poignant ... An emotional roller-coaster."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
*"Satisfying."
—School Library Journal (starred review)
If I Should Die Before I Wake
Beware of what you see behind closed eyes.
Hilary hates Jews.
As part of a neo-Nazi gang in her town, she's finally found a sense of belonging. But when she's critically injured in an accident, everything changes.
Lying near death in a Jewish hospital, Hilary finds herself bombarded by memories of a life in Poland. A life she never lived. Somehow, Hilary has become Chana, a Jewish girl fighting for her own life in World War II.
Forced from their home by the Nazis, Chana and her family struggle in the terrible Lodz ghetto, where starvation drives people to desperate acts and the streets are smeared with filth. Those strong enough to survive are shipped out—to the slaughterhouse at Auschwitz.
How can Chana—or Hilary—survive?
A New York Public Library Book
for the Teen Age
A YALSA Popular Paperback for Young Adults
A Iowa Teen Award winner
*"Bold ... deeply felt and often compelling."
—Kirkus Reviews
*"Page-tuming ... An interesting
and moving story."
—VOYA
*"Brilliantly rendered."
—Booklist