Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio (review)

not pretend that all options are equally desirable, but she is very careful to point out what will be lost if certain policies are pursued. At the same time, she does offer hope. Her book identifies a significant citizen activism that is prepared to challenge the entrenched policies of the commercial exploiters of the region as well as those of the National Forest Service. These individuals and groups seem to assure us that the complexity of forest conservation and renewal in the Southern mountains will not be uncontested terrain. —Gordon B. McKinney Gwyn Hyman Rubio. Icy Sparks. New York: Viking, 1998. $24.95. Gwyn Hyman Rubio's Icy Sparks is the story of a young girl's coming of age in Eastern Kentucky. Like any child, Icy has considerable searching to do in order to discover a self that she can live with. In her case, the search is made all the more difficult by Tourette's Syndrome, a nervous disorder which results in uncontrollable twitches, jerks, croaks, and occasional foul-mouthed ravings. Though her mother died in childbed and her father was stung to death by bees four years later, we meet Icy in an Appalachian pastoral. She lives an apparently idyllic life under the care of Matanni and Patanni, her watchful, even doting, grandparents. Too, the girl's natural gifts abound: a brilliant mind, a stunning imagination, hair that shines like goldenrod, and, as we learn near the book's end, an angelic voice. All goes well until the morning of her tenth birthday. The family is sitting at breakfast when ley's eyes begin to itch: I covered my face with my palms and inhaled deeply, hoping that the itchiness and tightness would go away; but instead I felt my eyelids, rolling up further like shades snapping open, and my eyeballs, rolling back like two turtles ducking inside their shells, and the space inside my head getting smaller and smaller until only a few thoughts could fit inside. ... I threw back my head and cried, 'Baby Jesus, Sweet Jesus! But that was only the beginning: 60 I was now no longer Icy Sparks from Poplar Holler. . . I was now a little girl who had to keep all of her compulsions inside. Whenever it became too much . . . I'd offer to get Matanni a jar of green beans from the root cellar . . . and once inside, I'd close the wooden planked door and let loose. Every blink that had been stored up spilled forth. Every jerk that had been contained leaped out. For ten minutes I'd contort until the anxiety was all spent. Then I'd climb up on the footstool and grab the Mason jar. In a story of psychological struggle, told from the protagonist's point of view, she is naturally the focus. But Rubio also creates an intriguing cast of secondary characters, most of whom either cause the stress which brings about ley's fits or give her the support she needs. In the first category, the most acutely developed antagonist is Mrs. Stilton. After the summer onset of ley's disorder, the beginning of school brings new trauma, trauma made all the worse by the calculating sadism of the deftly drawn fourth grade teacher. She perceives that Icy is bright, threateningly bright-and that she has a weakness. Immediately Mrs. Stilton makes Icy the psychological whipping girl for the class, salting her wounds so well that Icy must eventually be removed from the classroom. In the positive category, the good-hearted (if somewhat dull) principal, Mr. Wooten, allows Icy to study alone in the storage room, where she can do her lessons in peace. More importantly, she discovers there that by ordering the material world to her own scheme, she can begin to control her fits. The respite is short, however: Icy explodes when Mr. Wooten complains about the shelves. After this particularly vile fit, Icy finds herself in Bluegrass State Hospital, a residential psychiatric facility. Here too, Rubio presents one character who exacerbates ley's condition and another who gives hopeful support. Wilma, a vile nurse's aide, displays an ugliness of body and soul; like Miss Stilton, she works the wounds...