The Freak Observer

For eight years, Loa Lindgren's world ran like one of those mechanical models of the solar system, with her baby sister, Asta, as the sun. Asta suffered from a genetic disorder that left her a permanent infant, and caring for her was Loa's life. Everything spun neatly and regularly as the whole family orbited around Asta.

But now Asta's dead, and 16-year-old Loa's clockwork galaxy has collapsed. As Loa spins off on her own, her mind ambushes her with vivid nightmares and sadistic flashbacks--a textbook case of PTSD. But there are no textbook fixes for Loa's short-circuiting brain. She must find her own way to pry her world from the clutches of death.

The Freak Observer is a startling debut about death, life, astrophysics, and finding beauty in chaos.

"When I read for pleasure, I read for voice, and Loa's voice is so true, so bone-dry funny, so enormously sad....Brava Blythe Woolston for giving this girl's voice to the world." --Kathe Koja, author of Headlong

"Blythe Woolston's Loa Lindgren--like Kaye Gibbons's Ellen Foster or Sapphire's Precious Jones--is marvelously tenacious, off-beat, and resilient. This is a startling and believable voice." --Julie Schumacher, author of Black Box

"The Freak Observer is at once tender and shocking, smart and edgy, emotionally rich and emotionally raw. Woolston writes with what seems like great ease yet with great originality." --Christina Meldrum, author of Madapple