“Lost Soul be at Peace” by Maggie Thrash was recently added to the shelves of the CHS library. Its smooth cover depicts a purple-haired girl standing in the hills, shining a flashlight towards a white house, with a red sky fading to black from the sunset.
Thrash is best known for her previous graphic memoir, “Honor Girl,” which is critically acclaimed as an accurate depiction of the coming-of-age experience.
“Maggie Thrash’s memoir is agonizingly accurate about what it feels like to be a teenager – serious and ridiculous, confusing and profound,” said New York Times bestselling author Emma Straub. “I loved every page.”
Thrash, who is both the author and the main character, learns her way around life as a homosexual teenager struggling with depression and her relationship with her parents. A year and a half after the summer that changed her life, she wishes she could change it all back.
In the book’s description, Maggie is described as trapped in a dark depression and flunking eleventh grade, befuddling her patrician mother while going unnoticed by her father, a workaholic federal judge.
Alienation from her family causes a strange attachment to her car, Tommi, the only thing she’s truly connected to. So ultimately, when Tommi vanishes somewhere in the walls of her cavernous house, Maggie’s search isn’t just for her car—it’s for meaning, identity and a trace of who she was before.
“This is a little bit more introspective,” said Jeri Schneider, CHS librarian. “The girl is kind of dealing with figuring herself out, finding her way in the world. She’s dealing with some loss. She’s trying to understand her parents.”
With a queer main character, this book is part of CHS’s LGBTQ+ collection, identified by rainbow ribbons affixed to the book.
“I do know that we have a lot of interest in reading books, either with queer characters or by queer authors, so I put a lot of focus on that, and they’re easy to find in the library,” Schneider said.
With its colored pencil-style drawings and its relatable stories about struggles with parents, mental health and identity, Thrash’s “Lost Soul Be At Peace” is an inciting novel that gives a voice to the challenges of adolescence.
