The Blue Jar
The Blue Jar
In the house of the local midwife, sixteen-year-old Fran Waters avoids the world.
The story takes place in the summer of 1985. Twenty-two-year-old Charlie Garrett has assaulted Fran, and while she wants to block out and forget, her best friend and Charlie’s sister, Chensie, wants revenge.
Fran’s boyfriend Paul wants to be her knight-in-shining-armor, but she pushes him away and becomes infatuated with a neighbor old enough to be her father. Her parents are too wrapped up in their own problems to notice anything is wrong. Mr. Garrett, Chesnie and Charlie’s father, decides to punish the girls for what he see as lies spread about his son.
Through the story come boys who hang out smoking in the middle of the night, girls who come to the house with unwanted pregnancies, guys at parties who want more than they deserve, and one prostitute who wants to fall in love with one prince-like boy. Sometimes Fran and Chesnie try magic to solve their problems, and sometimes they are tempted by violence.
In the end, the girls must choose between the violence and their place in the world.
It’s not a plot I’d usually go for but judging by Writing in the Water I think you could catch the feeling of this perfectly. I suspect I’d read it for the good writing and the atmosphere.
fairyhedgehog, this is the first novel I wrote and the most straightforward.