Name: Sharon Edge Martin
Title: Accordion Girl
Genre: YA Novel in Verse

Pitch:

When her little brother, Ransom, runs away with an older man, Joie Maytubby leaves her old life behind—senior year of high school, preacher father, grief over Mama’s death, her piano—to find him. She may be too late to save the person she loves most, but can she find herself and her true beliefs in the alleys of downtown Tulsa?

1st 250:

(1)
Daylight
I’m out of here
Dad thinks I’m going to school early
To practice with the choir
Every liar starts somewhere

Can’t trust the school secretary
Not to call when I don’t show
By tardy bell
Dad has charmed her
And every other woman in Nashoba
Poor widower
He’ll be married
Just south of a year
Sooner wouldn’t be
Appropriate

Coward, afraid
to hitch, to be seen, of the dark

What business do I have out here?
Ransom is all the business
I need

(2)
Drag my school bag out the door
Haul what’s left of my heart with me

Think of Dad, alone in our little house
But don’t think long
Dad’s a survivor

I tell myself
Ransom is, too, but
Doubt speaks louder
Than hope

(3)
Ransom told me about his first boyfriend
When he was twelve. Jody.
He and Jody would walk through the cemetery
Holding hands
Ransom would come home smiling
But later, after he had time to think
He’d cry himself to sleep

He asked me if I thought he was crazy
To like boys “that way”
I told him, “No, I like boys that way, too.”

Jody and his parents left town
After someone carved an F on his forehead
F for fag

Ransom didn’t do much hand holding after that
He didn’t go out for sports
But he could sure talk cars
He started a lawn mower service
Took engines apart
And pieced them together again
Wore the grease under his fingernails
For protection