Just Like That by Gary D. Schmidt (review)

It's 1968 and Meryl Lee is off to coastal Maine and St. Elene's Preparatory Academy for Girls to give her stability after the devastating death of her best friend, Holling. St. Elene's is stately, exclusive, historic, and pastoral, full of the richest girls from the best families in the United States. While Meryl Lee attempts to ignore the gravitas that would have had Holling rolling on the floor and does her best to follow Headmistress MacKnockater's advice, she's faced with roommate troubles, overbearing teachers, and rigid upstairs/downstairs dynamics that only make her depression stronger. At the same time, Matt Coffin is a boy escaping troubles of his own as he's on the run from violent New York crime baron Leonidas Shug, and eventually the two meet. Schmidt combines two very different plotlines to surprising effect here, with Matt's life revealed in a series of interstitial chapters, each more frightening than the next. Meryl Lee's perils are more internal but no less damaging: her parents are divorcing; her growing friendships with the kitchen staff could mean their firing; and she's becoming aware of the many horrors of the Vietnam War. While there's a great deal to unpack in this title, Schmidt makes the reading easy with colloquial prose, familiarly frustrating clique dynamics, gripping scenes of danger, and frequent foreshadowing, resulting in an emotional page-turner whose resolution feels like taking a breath for the first time in 400 pages.