by Lauren Nicolle Taylor
Book 1, in A Paper Stars Novels
"Nora & Kettle"
Genre: Young Adult, Historical. 355 pages.
"Nora & Kettle"
Genre: Young Adult, Historical. 355 pages.
Price: $4.99 ebook (at time of post)
- SYNOPSIS -
What if Peter Pan was a homeless kid just trying to survive, and Wendy flew away for a really good reason?
Seventeen-year-old Kettle has had his share of adversity. As an orphaned Japanese American struggling to make a life in the aftermath of an event in history not often referred to—the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the removal of children from orphanages for having “one drop of Japanese blood in them”—things are finally looking up. He has his hideout in an abandoned subway tunnel, a job, and his gang of Lost Boys.
Desperate to run away, the world outside her oppressive brownstone calls to naïve, eighteen-year-old Nora—the privileged daughter of a controlling and violent civil rights lawyer who is building a compensation case for the interned Japanese Americans. But she is trapped, enduring abuse to protect her younger sister Frankie and wishing on the stars every night for things to change.
For months, they’ve lived side by side, their paths crossing yet never meeting. But when Nora is nearly killed and her sister taken away, their worlds collide as Kettle, grief stricken at the loss of a friend, angrily pulls Nora from her window.
In her honeyed eyes, Kettle sees sadness and suffering. In his, Nora sees the chance to take to the window and fly away.
Set in 1953, NORA AND KETTLE explores the collision of two teenagers facing extraordinary hardship. Their meeting is inevitable, devastating, and ultimately healing. Their stories, a collection of events, are each on their own harmless. But together, one after the other, they change the world.
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- Excerpt -
This is some medieval contest. Teeth gnash, men who smell much too much like
men and… fish… grab at each other’s heads and hair, pull each other down and claw
at each other’s necks. They are a desperate, scrabbling entity. I stand back from the
jostling crowd, wondering whether I can do this. I bite my lip, lock my limbs, and
decide it can’t be worse than anything else I’ve experienced. So I take a deep breath
and await instruction.
“You don’t have to do this,” Kettle says as he edges into the throng from the
western side.
Yes I do.
“I want to,” I say, trying to keep my voice low this time. Kettle chuckles at my
attempt to sound like a boy, his blue eyes flashing with excitement.
Over the noise, he yells, ducking when a fist comes flying at his shoulder, “You’re
small, fast, try to squeeze your way in.” He shoulders his way in and disappears. I
hear him shouting underneath a tangle of arms, “If you don’t make it through, wait for
me outside.”
He doesn’t think I’ll make it. It makes me more determined to prove him wrong. I
test a foot on the edge. It instantly gets stepped on. I grimace.
Think.
I think about a slap coming toward me, my father’s palm aching to mark my cheek
red. If I could have avoided it, ducked out of the way, what would I have done? How
would I have done it?
Each man in this throe of clashing bodies becomes my father. And I’m surprised
that instead of wanting to hurt them, all I want to do is get through, stand on the inside
of the fence where he/they can’t get to me anymore.
There are small shadows of space opening up before my eyes, and I hurl toward
them, I stop thinking, stop worrying, and just react. Under elbows, between bodies,
over large legs trying to stomp on me. There are no walls to be thrown against. No
one to protect. There is an escape, a way through for me to find.
The freedom tastes delicious, salty and hard-earned on my tongue.
I’m nearly there. The fence vibrates, ringing for me. Calling—You’re close, so
close. My hand stretches to the wire and I grab at it, missing as my head suddenly
jerks back. Someone’s fingers dig into my collar and pull me backward. The top
button on my shirt presses into my neck and I can’t breathe, a strange cacking,
gurgling noise coming from the back of my throat. I turn around to meet the owner of
the hand. A small, twisted man, a skeleton almost. My cap tips back and he sees my
face clearly, suddenly releasing me. “Sorry, ma’am,” he says. Then he’s scattered
behind me like a spilled bag of bones, and I’m thrust forward.
The gate slides open and my feet don’t feel like they’re connected to the ground.
I’m carried along, through the gap by a sea of muscled, grunting flesh and thrown into
the clear, sea air.
The guard at the gate claps it shut and shouts at me, “Lucky last, eh?”
I made it. Me.
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Lauren Nicolle Taylor lives in the lush Adelaide Hills. The daughter of a Malaysian nuclear physicist and an Australian scientist, she was expected to follow a science career path, attending Adelaide University and completing a Health Science degree with Honours in obstetrics and gynaecology.
She then worked in health research for a short time before having her first child. Due to their extensive health issues, Lauren spent her twenties as a full-time mother/carer to her three children. When her family life settled down, she turned to writing.
She is a 2014 Kindle Book Awards Semi-finalist and a USA Best Book Awards Finalist.
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