Along the Indigo by Elsie Chapman (review)

Legend says that dying after touching the soil of Marsden’s family’s land grants salvation. As a result, Mars has the grim task of checking each morning for people who have committed suicide in the woods behind the boarding house where she and her mother work, Mars as a cook and her mother as a prostitute. One morning, she finds a living boy from her school seeking answers about his brother’s suicide. As she and Jude search for something Jude believes his brother buried on the property, they fall in love, matching damage for damage as Jude’s father is physically abusive and Mars’ mother expects her to follow her into prostitution in repayment for her father’s debts following his own apparent suicide. The relentless tragedy of their respective stories is augmented by the prejudice Mars feels as one of the few nonwhite people in her town; she is half-Asian and Jude is half-black, but while Jude has friends, Mars is doubly oppressed and outcast by her heritage, her family’s history, and her seemingly inevitable future. Her determination to take her younger sister and escape a town that seems completely given over to vice, debauchery, and depression is certainly a laudable goal, but her plan seems hopelessly naïve and her rehearsal of fears attenuated and repetitive. The romance between Mars and Jude is something of a bright spot, however, at least until it temporarily falls apart. The resolution that emerges is cleverly managed, and it gives readers as well as Mars a hopeful reprieve.