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With the cinematic and terrifying beauty of the American South humming behind each line, Jon Pineda's Let's No One Get Hurt is a coming-of-age story set equally between real-world issues of race and socioeconomics, and a magical, Huck Finn-esque universe of community and exploration.
Fifteen-year-old Pearl is squatting in an abandoned boathouse with her father, a disgraced college professor, and two other grown men, deep in the swamps of the American South. All four live on the fringe, scavenging what they can-catfish, lumber, scraps for their ailing dog. Despite the isolation, Pearl feels at home with her makeshift family: the three men care for Pearl and teach her what they know of the world.
Mason Boyd, aka "Main Boy," is from a nearby affluent neighborhood where he and his raucous friends ride around in tricked-out golf carts, shoot their fathers' shotguns, and aspire to make Internet pranking videos. While Pearl is out scavenging in the woods, she meets Main Boy, who eventually reveals that his father has purchased the property on which Pearl and the others are squatting. With all the power in Main Boy's hands, a very unbalanced relationship forms between the two kids, culminating in a devastating scene of violence and humiliation.
Fifteen-year-old Pearl is squatting in an abandoned boathouse with her father, a disgraced college professor, and two other grown men, deep in the swamps of the American South. All four live on the fringe, scavenging what they can-catfish, lumber, scraps for their ailing dog. Despite the isolation, Pearl feels at home with her makeshift family: the three men care for Pearl and teach her what they know of the world.
Mason Boyd, aka "Main Boy," is from a nearby affluent neighborhood where he and his raucous friends ride around in tricked-out golf carts, shoot their fathers' shotguns, and aspire to make Internet pranking videos. While Pearl is out scavenging in the woods, she meets Main Boy, who eventually reveals that his father has purchased the property on which Pearl and the others are squatting. With all the power in Main Boy's hands, a very unbalanced relationship forms between the two kids, culminating in a devastating scene of violence and humiliation.
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Reviews
"[A] lyrical and powerful novel. It's a well written book that manages to be both honest and poetic at the same time . . . Let's No One Get Hurt is an excellent coming-of-age novel that explores how we deal, or don't deal, with loss and abandonment, and how we can create new versions of ourselves when we're forced to."
Michael Schaub, NPR.org
"Set inside the boggy South, Jon Pineda's Let's No One Get Hurt is a Venus flytrap of a book: come too close and it just might get you . . . [Pearl's] low-down gallows humor and preternatural wisdom lighten the melancholy of adolescent catastrophe, a subject that the author of this compassionate novel understands quite well . . . If Pineda's novel has a straight-ahead message, it's that every plac
Jeff Calder, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"Let's No One Get Hurt is a modern coming-of-age story centered on the American South, and there's no doubt that it's destined to be on reading lists for years to come."
Chelsea Adelaine Hassler, PopSugar