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 ZEN AND XANDER UNDONE
NOW AVAILABLE!
Zen and Xander Vogel are sisters—truly, madly, deeply sisters and this is their last summer together before Xander goes away to college. Zen: Dependable Responsible The "good girl" Has a black belt in karate and maybe a crush on the boy next door Xander: Wild Self-destructive Math genius Spiraling out of control and deliberately ignoring the boy next door This summer they are... Learning to survive without their mother Dealing with a father who's retreated to the basement Solving a mystery from their mother's past And meeting some boys that include the good the bad and the ugly By summer's end, Zen and Xander will never be the same.  To see a larger image of the cover, click here.
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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Hardcover May 2010, ISBN: 9780547062488 
"Before Zen and Xander's mom Marie died, she Made Important Arrangements. The girls receive loving, chatty, spookily appropriate advice-filled letters from her on important dates, and she pre-purchased a perfect prom dress for normally dance-eschewing Zen. Sadly and realistically, no amount of careful planning could prevent Zen, Xander and their dad, James, from losing themselves in grief, so one year after Marie's funeral, James still wallows in the basement, Zen's barely controlled anger finds a dangerous outlet in her black-belt skills and Xander loses herself in drink, drugs and sex. Burning curiosity (tinged with dread) about their mother's long-ago relationship with a graduate-school professor drags the girls out of their funk and pushes them to see Marie as a fully three-dimensional person: loving, brilliant, flawed and forgiven. As their view of Marie develops, so does their understanding of themselves without her, rendering what could be clichéd and dull instead touching, urgent and involving. Zen's frank narration—full of longing and hard-won insight—draws readers in and won't let go."—Kirkus Reviews (STARRED REVIEW) "Although the "dead mother" plot has been done and done again, Ryan's approach asks not "How do we mourn?" but "Who are we now?" Following their mother's death, sisters Athena (Zen) and Alexandra (Xander) head off in different, self-destructive directions. Xander acts out with dangerous guys and drugs, while Zen focuses on karate and uses Xander's guys as punching bags, which severely injures her back. Their mother left a series of letters and gifts with a secret accomplice who delivers them to the girls on significant occasions in this first year after her death. Although the sisters crave and treasure these communiqués from the dead, it is clear that wounds are reopened with each letter. Slowly, they reacquaint themselves with old friends and find a future with new ones as they decipher who they are and what holds their family together without their mother. Vivid emotions and unexpected events keep the reader engaged as the characters grow and find a way back to themselves." —Heather Booth, Booklist "Zen and Xander have always been opposites; flashy Xander is brilliant in school, while Zen is more laid back and focused on studying martial arts. When their mother dies, they grieve in different ways. Their father disappears into his misery, Xander gets involved with a crowd that deals in drugs and alcohol, and Zen finds herself resorting to violence as the first solution to dangerous situations. When she gets injured and can no longer teach karate until she has healed in both body and spirit, she struggles with her feelings of helplessness and her inability to get through her sister's ever more hazardous attitude. It only makes things worse when the girls uncover a secret about their mother that has them wondering if they ever really knew her. Zen's narration gives both her actions and her emotions a feeling of immediacy and closeness. Though the ending leaves some questions about Zen's future unanswered, both Xander and the girls' father go through dramatic changes, which Zen chronicles with keen insight. The themes of the negative influences of drugs and alcohol never overpower the story; instead, the focus remains tightly on two young women at a sensitive time in their lives." —School Library Journal  |
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