CANR
WORK TITLE: RAINBOW BLACK
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.maggiethrash.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: CA 388
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1985, in Atlanta, GA.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Rookie (website), staff writer.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
[open new]Maggie Thrash is a writer and illustrator who has drawn on youthful experiences to compose two stirring graphic memoirs, Honor Girl and Lost Soul, Be at Peace, and she has also written the “Strange” series of satirical mysteries for young adults. She was born in Atlanta and grew up there, with her father serving as a federal judge. She has taken inspiration from authors including Nell Zink and Donna Tartt and TV series like Euphoria and Bad Sisters. She also admits to enjoying gossip and Lifetime movies. Thrash established her career as a young-adult author during the later 2010s and has worked as a staff writer for the Rookie website. She was living in New Hampshire through the mid-2020s, taking inspiration from the New England milieu for her first adult novel, Rainbow Black. In a capsule biography at the end of a CrimeReads essay Thrash wrote about the cultural phenomenon at the heart of that novel, she bears the mantle of “a lesbian writer wrestling with important themes, including sexuality, transphobia, and identity.”[suspend new]
Thrash’s first book, a graphic memoir, is Honor Girl. The volume tells of her memorable summer at an all-girl camp. At fifteen, Maggie returns to a Christian camp in Kentucky called Camp Bellflower for Girls, which she has been going to for many summers. When a counselor named Erin touches her, a flood of emotion washes over Maggie. She realizes she has romantic feelings for Erin. Maggie tries to keep her attraction to Erin a secret in order to be accepted by her fellow campers. Eventually, she tells a close friend that she may be a lesbian.
In an interview with Amanda Bell, a contributor to MTV, Thrash explained why she wrote the book and why she chose to use drawings to help tell her story: “I knew I needed to tell this story to fully become an adult because it’s been holding me back for a while—keeping it inside. I finally just felt prepared to do it. My parents didn’t know about this—I wasn’t really ‘out’ or anything. So, it was just time to kind of move on from this and talk about it. And I wanted to do a normal—quote-unquote ‘normal’—memoir with words only. I don’t have any art experience—I don’t have an art background or anything—but I just found it to be so awkward writing about myself.” Thrash continued: “I was terrible at it. I don’t know. Just having to try and read about myself, explaining my rationale and explaining the way I think, it didn’t work at all, and I found it really freeing to just draw a picture of myself with a word balloon. It’s just like there I am, that’s what I say. That’s what I said. It made opening up a lot easier for me to do it with pictures.”
Reviews of Honor Girl were favorable. Vera Brosgol, in the New York Times, commented: “In this graphic memoir, Thrash writes with confidence and skill remarkable for a debut. … She offsets heartache with sharp humor, sincere but never cloying. Period details, such as Maggie’s fondness for Kevin Richardson (the brooding Backstreet Boy) and a brand-new “Harry Potter” book making the rounds, place the story at the turn of the millennium, though the feelings involved are timeless.” “This book was a quick read that managed to be both funny and hard hitting,” remarked Alyssa Luis at Teenreads. Luis added: “Thrash told a tale that is important to be heard.” Writing for the Comics Journal, Monica McKelvey Johnson asserted: “Make no mistake, the passive devastation of this story is absolutely gut-wrenching, so be prepared to read the book in a safe space where you can moan and curse out loud like I did. However, unlike so many trite stories of love, this one stands out as a truer, more likely scenario.”
Lisa A. Hazlett, in the Voice of Youth Advocates, suggested: “Maggie’s emotions are sharply honest, with readers feeling her exhilaration, anxiety, awkwardness, confusion, and pain.” A contributor to Kirkus Reviews opined: “She has so carefully and skillfully captured a universal moment … that readers will find her story captivating.” The same contributor called Honor Girl “a luminescent memoir.” School Library Journal critic Mahnaz Dar described it as “an insightful and thought-provoking work.” “This honest, raw, and touching graphic memoir will resonate with teens coming to terms with identities,” stated Booklist writer Sarah Hunter. A reviewer in Publishers Weekly commented: “Thrash writes with an intoxicating mix of candor, irony, and fresh passion.”
[resume new]Thrash made her fiction debut with the young-adult thriller We Know It Was You: A Strange Truth Novel (also published as Strange Truth). Clever Benny Flax and go-getting Virginia Leeds, sole members of the Mystery Club at Winship Academy (and latent love interests), finally get a case worth investigating when pretty, popular cheerleader Brittany, dressed as the school mascot, flees the football field midgame and throws herself off a bridge into the Chattahoochee River. The police assume suicide, but Benny and Virginia suspect foul play, as video footage appears to confirm, and realize that no one will be safe until the killer is caught.
School Library Journal reviewer Kimberli Buckley characterized Thrash’s debut novel as a “fast-paced, sassy, and sultry whodunit,” marked by a “fine mix of teen angst and high school drama with a smooth twist of mystery and intrigue.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer found the set-up “intriguing” and the plot ambitious but feared that the story’s emotional depth is “undermined by the flippancy with which Thrash tackles such topics as stalking, rape, death, and child pornography.” In Voice of Youth Advocates, Jamie Hansen praised the fifteen-year-old protagonists as “complex and wholly sympathetic” and the supporting cast as “equally vivid and memorable.” BookPage reviewer Kimberly Giarratano summed We Know It Was You up as a “kooky mystery”—“there’s a healthy dose of humor with the crime, although the satire may not resonate with all readers.”
Thrash delivers a second “Strange” novel with Strange Lies, in which student body president DeAndre, one of Winship Academy’s only Black students, is gored with a rack of deer antlers at the science expo. Playing into the unraveling mystery are a drug deal in the girls’ bathroom, an unaccountable suspension, and the headmaster’s abuse of his wayward son. With Virginia and Benny on the case, a Kirkus Reviews writer affirmed that Thrash has mastered the voices of the “two oddball outsiders” who fit right into her “self-assured, madcap storytelling.” Positioning herself as a reader with whom Thrash’s satire fails to resonate, Lynne Farrell Stover in Voice of Youth Advocates suggested that “disgusting racism, rampant bullying, foul language, and unlikeable minor characters making one bad decision after another can distract rather than entertain.” In School Library Journal, Laura Falli similarly cautioned that racist, sexist, and classist “tropes are introduced without nuance and deeper exploration” and that “the offensive stereotypes and flat, narcissistic characters demean this book’s audience.” Noting that the plot of Strange Lies is both “more plausible and more complicated” than its predecessor’s and offers “plenty to ponder,” the Kirkus Reviews writer concluded that “brazen characters and dark humor will compel readers forward.”
Lost Soul, Be at Peace is Thrash’s second graphic memoir, inflected by fantasy. Opening a year and a half after the end of Honor Girl, the narrative finds Maggie depressed and at risk of failing junior year at her prep school. Coming out as a lesbian was a let-down, since her peers promptly pivoted to ignoring her, and emotional distance from her socialite mother and judge of a father has left her languishing in their oversized home. When her beloved cat Tommi disappears, a search turns up a different Tommy—the ghost of a boy whose disadvantaged experiences hint at a connection to her father’s work. Her connection with Tommy and fulfilling participation with her dance troupe promise to point Maggie toward better days.
A Kirkus Reviews writer proclaimed that Thrash has “masterfully captured the tedium and melancholy” of the teenage years in her second graphic memoir, a “thoughtful and compelling exploration of adolescence.” The reviewer noted that the partly naive, watercolor-shaded illustrations “add a wonderfully ethereal layer to an already nuanced offering.” In Booklist, Summer Hayes observed that with people’s faces characterized by blank stares, the “horror-tinged dream sequences are vivid and unsettling,” and the narrative’s “emotional weight … can feel relentless”—but this is balanced by the “hopeful” conclusion. Praising the “particularly inspired” use of color in illustrations that “brim with emotion,” School Library Journal reviewer Mahnaz Dar found in Lost Soul, Be at Peace a “pitch-perfect blend of caustic humor, melancholy, and tenderness.”
Rainbow Black unfolds at the height of the “Satanic Panic” of the late twentieth century, when conspiracy theorists imagined children were being ritually abused at daycare centers. Raised by the hippie proprietors of the Rainbow Kids day-care center in New Hampshire, thirteen-year-old Lacey Bond finds her life thrown into turmoil when her parents are accused of abuse and arrested. Lacey ends up in a group home, but her fate is nothing compared to older sister Eclair’s. Supported by girlfriend Dylan, a survivor of abuse, Lacey hopes to endure the despair. A Publishers Weekly reviewer declared that Thrash “convinces in her wrenching portrait of a community’s intolerance and the resilience of queer love,” and “readers will be stirred.” Admiring how the nonlinear narrative builds up sympathy for the downtrodden Lacey, a Kirkus Reviews writer added that Thrash “does a terrific job of making every character both singular and nuanced.” The reviewer concluded that with Rainbow Black, Thrash “turns trauma, injustice, and hideous bad fortune into a story about resilience, reinvention, and love.”[close new]
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, June 1, 2015, Sarah Hunter, review of Honor Girl, p. 67; September 15, 2018, Summer Hayes, review of Lost Soul, Be at Peace, p. 47.
BookPage, October, 2016, Kimberly Giarratano, review of We Know It Was You: A Strange Truth Novel, p. 25.
Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2015, review of Honor Girl; September 1, 2017, review of Strange Lies; August 1, 2018, review of Lost Soul, Be at Peace; March 1, 2024, review of Rainbow Black.
Publishers Weekly, June 1, 2015, review of Honor Girl, p. 62; December 2, 2015, review of Honor Girl, p. 118; August 1, 2016, review of We Know It Was You, p. 71; January 8, 2024, review of Rainbow Black, p. 29.
School Library Journal, June, 2015, Mahnaz Dar, review of Honor Girl, p. 146; July, 2016, Kimberli Buckley, review of We Know It Was You, p. 85; August, 2017, Laura Falli, review of Strange Lies, p. 108; August, 2018, Mahnaz Dar, review of Lost Soul, Be at Peace, p. 79.
Voice of Youth Advocates, October, 2015, Lisa A. Hazlett and Twila A. Sweeney, review of Honor Girl, p. 85; October, 2016, Jamie Hansen, review of We Know It Was You, p. 71; October, 2017, Lynne Farrell Stover, review of Strange Lies, p. 66; December, 2018, Heather Christensen, review of Lost Soul, Be at Peace, p. 74.
ONLINE
Book Notions, https://booknotions.com/ (April 21, 2024), author Q&A.
Comics Journal, http://www.tcj.com/ (November 13, 2015), Monica McKelvey Johnson, review of Honor Girl.
CrimeReads, https://crimereads.com/ (March 15, 2024), Maggie Thrash, “Looking Back on the 90s-Era Satanic Panic in a New Age of Conspiracy Theories.”
Maggie Thrash website, http://www.maggiethrash.com (April 21, 2024).
MTV website, http://www.mtv.com/ (September 7, 2015), Amanda Bell, author interview.
New York Times Online, http://www.nytimes.com/ (August 21, 2015), Vera Brosgol, review of Honor Girl.
Teenreads, http://www.teenreads.com/ (September 9, 2015), Alyssa Luis, review of Honor Girl.
Writer’s Digest Online, https://www.writersdigest.com/ (March 20, 2024), Robert Lee Brewer, “Maggie Thrash: On Writing 10 Major Drafts.”
Bio
MAGGIE THRASH is the author of the critically acclaimed graphic memoirs Honor Girl, which was nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Lost Soul, Be at Peace, as well as two novels for young adults. Rainbow Black is her first novel for adults. Born and raised in Atlanta, she lives in New Hampshire.
Maggie Thrash
Maggie Thrash grew up in the south. She is the author of the graphic memoir, Honor Girl, published by Candlewick Press. Her short stories and non-fiction articles can be found on Rookie. Maggie Thrash is represented by Stephen Barr of Writers House.
Genres: Young Adult Fiction
New and upcoming books
March 2024
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Rainbow Black
Series
Strange
1. We Know It Was You (2016)
Strange Truth (2017)
2. Strange Lies (2017)
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Novels
Rainbow Black (2024)
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Graphic Novels hide
Honor Girl (2017)
Lost Soul, Be at Peace (2018)
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Non fiction hide
Honor Girl: A Graphic Memoir (2015)
Q&A With Maggie Thrash
New Information about Upcoming Book Related News
Q&A With Maggie Thrash
Maggie Thrash is the author of Honor Girl, Strange Lies, Lost Soul Be At Peace, Strange Truth & coming out on March 19th Rainbow Black.
Q: Maggie, would you like to tell the readers a little bit about your book Rainbow Black, & what makes this novel unique from your other ones?
A: Rainbow Black is my first work of adult fiction. It’s also my first book that isn’t set in the South. I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, but I now live in New Hampshire, where Rainbow Black is set. I wanted to explore the New England spirit in all its coldness and beauty, the way it’s still haunted by America’s Puritan ghosts. It was the perfect setting for a novel about the Satanic Panic⎯a real-life phenomenon that occurred in the late 80s where people all over the country started believing in a conspiracy theory that preschool teachers were committing Satanic ritual abuse on children.
Q: Where did the idea for Rainbow Black come from?
A: I was too young to be aware of the Satanic Panic while it was happening. By the time I was a teenager it had been mostly forgotten except for a vague idea leftover in people’s minds that Dungeons and Dragons was dangerous. Moral panics are usually litigated at the most disposable edges of society: the tabloids, talk shows, twitter. They trend for a while, then are thrown away like trash without ever being resolved. I wanted to write a very intimate, very detailed novel from the point of view of a girl who gets swept up in one of America’s moral panics. I wanted to explore what happens to the people we throw away like old newspapers as soon as the story isn’t trendy anymore.
Q: How long did it take for you to write Rainbow Black? Did it take just as long for you to write your other books?
A: It took much longer to write Rainbow Black⎯almost 14 years. My other books took between 6 months and 2 years to write.
Q: Are you currently writing your next book & if so can you reveal any details about it?
A: I’m in a chaotic stage where I’m trying out lots of different ideas. I don’t know exactly where I’ll land.
Q: Does Hollywood have the rights to your work?
A: I currently own the rights to all my work.
Q: What lessons do you hope readers take away from your novels?
A: I don’t write books to teach lessons, but, if anything, I would hope the reader of Rainbow Black might come away from the book feeling inspired to be less judgmental toward others, and toward themselves.
LOOKING BACK ON THE 90S-ERA SATANIC PANIC IN A NEW AGE OF CONSPIRACY THEORIES
On the "toxic Puritan cycle" that causes ordinary people to either embrace outlandish ideas or pathologize those who do
MARCH 15, 2024 BY MAGGIE THRASH
VIA HARPER PERENNIAL
Remember Pizzagate? In 2016, a conspiracy theory that high-ranking Democrats were running a pedophile ring out of a D.C. pizzeria compelled a man to open fire inside the restaurant in an attempt to rescue the imprisoned children, who didn’t exist. The story dominated headlines for five minutes before fading into the category of “well, that happened.” The bamboozled gunman, Edgar Maddison Welch, was sent to jail and mostly forgotten, his identity blurring into an avatar for a certain set of social anxieties—that liberalism breeds perversion, that politicians lie, that modern life is emasculating. Any larger lessons which Pizzagate may have held for society were swiftly buried in the trash heap of yesterday’s news.
Something that gets lost in our conversations about ‘unprecedented times’ is that many of our cultural uproars have happened before, often within our own lifetimes. I was born in 1985 during the rise of the ‘Satanic Panic,’ a phenomenon where people all over the country started to believe a conspiracy that daycare providers were committing Satanic ritual abuse on children. The hysteria can be traced back to the 1980 book Michelle Remembers by psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder. Pazder used the now discredited technique of ‘memory recovery therapy’ to spread a story that his patient (and later wife) Michelle Smith had been abused as a child at the hands of an underground Satanic organization. There was no evidence that any of Smith’s ‘recovered’ memories were real, but the book was a hit. Smith appeared on Oprah and stoked nation-wide fears that daycare providers were Satanic pedophiles.
Looking back, it’s easy to connect the Satanic Panic to social anxieties over feminism threatening the traditional family unit. The increase of women in the workplace had increased the need for day care, shaping a community landscape in which children were being raised by strangers. This moral panic coincided with a key time in television history when the news was transitioning from the realm of sober information dissemination to that of entertainment, thanks in part to the abolishment of the FCC fairness doctrine in 1987. The fairness doctrine had required news outlets to present both sides of an issue for balanced coverage. Now, outlets could skip the boring bits of measured and fact-checked counterpoints in their reporting. And in a bewilderingly complex modern world, the notion of a secret, ancient conspiracy being the source of all evil held immense appeal to viewers.
IN A BEWILDERINGLY COMPLEX MODERN WORLD, THE NOTION OF A SECRET, ANCIENT CONSPIRACY BEING THE SOURCE OF ALL EVIL HELD IMMENSE APPEAL…
America’s Puritan settlers believed in a ‘world of wonders’ in which God and Satan meddled directly in everyday people’s lives like an ongoing chess game. The stakes of such a game could rapidly escalate into hysteria as people accused each other of being on the devil’s side, most famously exemplified by the Salem Witch Trials of 1692-1693. The lure of the moral panic is two-fold: a deep desire to purify society through scapegoating, and the irresistible drama of a witch hunt. What may begin with the earnest goal of rooting out evil becomes a grotesque and twisted form of entertainment, with very real consequences for the individuals wrapped up in it.
In the case of the Satanic Panic, innocent pre-school teachers like the McMartin family in California were arrested and dragged through years of humiliating and expensive trials. The McMartins were eventually acquitted, but their business was destroyed, and their name would forever be associated with a child abuse scandal—if anyone remembered them at all. By the time I was a teenager in the late 90’s era of bubblegum pop and Beanie Babies, the dark madness of the Satanic Panic felt like a surreal, forgotten dream. When ‘fake news’ became a hot button issue during the 2016 presidential election, it was treated as a product of the internet, as if we hadn’t gone through an identical phenomenon before Facebook existed. In a culture where current events are served up as disposable entertainment, the recent past may as well be ancient history.
Most of us know what it’s like to be a consumer of news-as-entertainment. It’s addictive, it’s bad for you, and it’s queasily delicious. During April and May of 2022, I gorged myself on the Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard defamation trial. Heard was a perfect target for Puritan moral panic with her bisexuality, the vixen-like roles she tended to be cast in, and the unnerving, almost supernatural quality of her beauty (Heard’s face is popularly thought to be a 91.85% match to the ‘Golden Ratio’). I watched the televised court proceedings every day as if it were a thrilling limited series. As I became swept away by the entertainment value of the trial, the truth that was supposedly being litigated seemed less and less important. The case for Heard’s victimhood was lost amid Depp’s antics, her team’s terrible legal strategy, and Heard’s own abysmal performance on the stand. The show of the trial eclipsed its function so totally I felt that watching it had left me with a worse grasp on the truth than someone who hadn’t tuned in at all. After the trial was over, more details about Depp’s alleged abuse emerged, but by then I was, frankly, over it.
While this cultural practice of scapegoating-as-entertainment certainly leaves a nasty taste in the mouth, to criticize it falls into the trap of providing even more fodder for Puritanical outrage. It would be tempting, for instance, to issue a fiery sermon condemning anyone who gets any relish out of someone else’s public humiliation (the term ‘guilty pleasure’ is glaring evidence of the Puritan genetic code still present in our cultural DNA). But heaping more shame upon shame doesn’t seem like an effective way out of this trap to me. It would only continue the cycle in which we instigate witch hunts, enjoy doing it, then shame ourselves for our enjoyment. We would promise not to do it again but forget that promise as soon as the next juicy news item drops about someone doing something bad.
My new novel Rainbow Black is about a young girl whose parents are targeted amid the Satanic Panic like the real life McMartins. It was important to me to center the story around a victim of hysteria, rather than a consumer of it. I wanted to explore the life-long trauma that our unlucky scapegoats carry with them long after the media machine has moved on. What happens to these people once their entertainment value has been sucked dry and we discard them like trash? As consumers, the rush of excitement over the next Satanic Panic can be enough to erase our memory that we went through all this before, and it only made us sick. The only way out of our toxic Puritan cycle is to remember that the people at the center of our moral panics aren’t representations of our sins. They are, simply and profoundly, people.
Maggie Thrash is a lesbian writer wrestling with important themes, including sexuality, transphobia, and identity. She is unafraid of plumbing dark waters with an off-kilter humor and storytelling bravado reminiscent of the writing of Nell Zink, Alissa Nutting, Donna Tartt, and Ottessa Moshfegh, as well as TV series such as Euphoria, Skins, Yellowjackets, Bad Sisters, and Fleabag. Besides Honor Girl, she is the author of Lost Soul, Be At Peace, as well as two other novels for young adults. Her first novel for adults, RAINBOW BLACK, is out from Harper Perennial on March 19, 2024. Born and raised in Atlanta, she now lives in New Hampshire. For more on Maggie and her work, visit: https://www.maggiethrash.com/
Maggie Thrash: On Writing 10 Major Drafts
In this interview, author Maggie Thrash discusses the process of writing her new literary thriller, Rainbow Black.
ROBERT LEE BREWERMAR 20, 2024
Maggie Thrash is the author of the critically acclaimed graphic memoirs, Honor Girl (a Los Angeles Times Book Prize nominee) and Lost Soul, Be At Peace, as well as two novels for young adults. Born and raised in Atlanta, she lives in New Hampshire. Follow her on Instagram.
Maggie Thrash: On Writing 10 Major Drafts
Maggie Thrash
In this interview, Maggie discusses the process of writing her new literary thriller (and her debut novel for adults), Rainbow Black, the value of a good editor, and more!
Name: Maggie Thrash
Literary agent: Stephen Barr, Writer’s House
Book title: Rainbow Black
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release date: March 19, 2024
Genre/category: Legal thriller, literary fiction
Previous titles: Honor Girl; Lost Soul Be At Peace
Elevator pitch: Rainbow Black is a legal thriller about queer identity and American media set during the late-1980s Satanic Panic.
Maggie Thrash: On Writing 10 Major Drafts
Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]
What prompted you to write this book?
My father is a federal judge, so I think I naturally see the world through a legalistic lens. But I’m also very dramatic. I love gossip and Lifetime movies. So, I wanted to write a legal thriller that married high drama with meticulous procedure. Inside the courtroom, you can have the wildest, bloodiest, most deranged criminal drama playing out, but all the characters are restrained by their roles (prosecutor, defendant, judge, jury, etc.).
Historically, queer people know exactly what it’s like to be confined to playing a role in public. We’re used to feeling constantly judged as though our inner lives are on trial. The law and queerness share a deeply contentious, unresolved history. With Rainbow Black I wanted to show that.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
Rainbow Black took 14 years to write. As I grew up, the book grew up with me. At one point I deleted the whole thing, keeping only the main character and the setting of New Hampshire. It went through at least 10 major drafts.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
In 2021 my agent brought on an editor, Genevieve Gagne-Hawes. Gen opened my eyes to how intensely impactful a great editor can be. A truly great editor doesn’t just make the book better; they make the author a better person.
Maggie Thrash: On Writing 10 Major Drafts
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
As the years went on, Rainbow Black became less cynical. I became less afraid of the gooeyness of real emotion. I surprised myself in how raw and earnest I was capable of being.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
I hope they get a fantastic reading experience. I wrote Rainbow Black for readers who are bored, for readers who are searching for something gripping and complicated.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Don’t listen to advice from authors. Figure out what works for you and do it!
THRASH, Maggie. We Know It Was You. 352p. (Strange Truth: Bk. 1). ebook available. S. & S./Simon Pulse. Oct. 2016. Tr $17.99. ISBN 9781481462006.
Gr 9 Up--A fast-paced, sassy, and sultry whodunit. Mystery Club team members Benny and Virginia witness Brittany Montague in her school mascot costume jumping off a bridge and into the river while an odd figure just stands by and watches. Strangely enough, while all of this is happening, the entire Winship football team and all of the cheerleaders seem to be deranged and are running around wild in the woods. Plenty of drinking, dancing, and flirting go along with the unraveling of the case of the bridge-jumping mascot. The two gumshoes have to go up against the beautiful Zaire, one of Virginia's housemates; the awkwardly strange Gerard, who likes to dress up like Patrick Swayze; and the goofy yet insanely adorable German foreign exchange student Gottfried. The dynamic duo team "Beninia" may have their differences, but they also have respect for each other, as well as a deep mutual attraction. Dealing with run-ins with the police, encounters with long-haired jazz weirdos, and the strange behaviors that the popular kids have been exhibiting, they actually do a fairly good job of finding meaningful clues. VERDICT This work is a fine mix of teen angst and high school drama with a smooth twist of mystery and intrigue.--Kimberli Buckley, Concord Public Library, CA
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Buckley, Kimberli. "Thrash, Maggie. We Know It Was You." School Library Journal, vol. 62, no. 7, July 2016, p. 85. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A457303215/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=130023d1. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
We Know It Was You
Maggie Thrash. Simon Pulse, $17.99 (352p) ISBN 978-1-4814-6200-6
This convoluted first book in the Strange Truth series follows teenage outcasts Benny Flax and Virginia Leeds, the sole members of Winship Academy's Mystery Club, as they investigate the suspicious death of a classmate, Brittany Montague. When a school-mascot-costume-clad Brittany flees the Friday night football game, runs into the woods, and plunges off a bridge into a ravine, everyone assumes that it's a suicide. Benny and Virginia are dubious, though, and while the police search Atlanta's Chattahoochee River for a corpse, the detecting duo unearths evidence suggesting that Brittany was murdered. There's a lot more going on at Winship Academy than meets the eye, and Benny and Virginia soon realize that unless they catch the killer, no one is safe. Thrash (Honor Girl) squanders an intriguing setup with cartoonish characters, preposterous plot twists, and an unsatisfying conclusion. Any warmth or depth conferred by Benny and Virginia's unlikely friendship is undermined by the flippancy with which Thrash tackles such topics as stalking, rape, death, and child pornography. Ages 14-up. Agent: Stephen Barr, Writers House. (Oct.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"We Know It Was You." Publishers Weekly, vol. 263, no. 31, 1 Aug. 2016, p. 71. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A460285767/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5d01ece4. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
Thrash, Maggie. We Know It Was You: Strange Truth. Simon Pulse, 2016. 352p. $17.99. 978-1-4814-6200-6.
During half-time at the Winship Academy football game, one of the cheerleaders, beautiful and popular Brittany Montague, dressed in the grotesque wildcat mascot costume, throws herself off a bridge into the surging Chattahoochee River. Only nerdy day-tudent Benny Flax and impulsive boarder Virginia Leeds, the sole members of the school's Mystery Club, seem to want to find out why. The unlikely duo discovers that snobby Winship Academy and its eccentric student body is a hotbed of secrets that many people would prefer to keep buried. Benny and Virginia also learn that things are not always what they seem and school mascots are, in reality, more than a little creepy.
Thrash offers her readers a complicated and twisty tale that blends noir mystery, gothic romance, and dark humor. Readers may have frequently encountered mismatched amateur detective pairs in the mystery genre, but surely they have never met any crime solvers like Benny and Virginia, two complex and wholly sympathetic characters who manage to make even teen angst seem fresh and new. Secondary characters, like sophisticated and studious Zaire (seemingly in possession of strange powers) and spacy exchange student Gottfried (staying much longer at Winship than his allotted time) are equally vivid and memorable. Suggest this intricate "whodunit" to sophisticated readers who prefer convoluted mysteries with slightly weird characters.
--Jamie Hansen.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 E L Kurdyla Publishing LLC
http://www.voya.com
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Hansen, Jamie. "Thrash, Maggie. We Know It Was You: Strange Truth." Voice of Youth Advocates, vol. 39, no. 4, Oct. 2016, p. 71. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A467831137/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=94d63ccb. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
WE KNOW IT WAS YOU
By Maggie Thrash
Simon Pulse
$17.99, 352 pages
ISBN 9781481462006
eBook available
Ages 14 and up
MYSTERY
Fifteen-year-old Benny Flax and Virginia Leeds are the only two members of Mystery Club, an extracurricular group that is sorely lacking in both participants and crimes to solve--until the Friday night football game when cheerleader Brittany, dressed as the school's mascot, inexplicably runs off the field and jumps off a bridge. The police are quick to rule Brittany's death a suicide, but Benny and Virginia think differently after they discover camera footage of both the cheerleaders' locker room and the apparent suicide. With Benny's keen level of observation and Virginia's ability to go unnoticed, the two decide to investigate the mystery themselves, even if it means lying to police and breaking the law. Because for Benny and Virginia, Mystery Club is all they have.
Maggie Thrash, author of the graphic memoir Honor Girl, has penned a kooky mystery that should be read through the lens of an Amy Schumer skit. The characters and the school itself are clever caricatures, and readers shouldn't expect a lot of depth. Benny is analytical and clever, but he struggles to connect socially, while Virginia makes meek attempts to transform her reputation as a gossip and busybody (what better way to do that than to investigate your fellow classmates for murder?). There's a healthy dose of humor with the crime, although the satire may not resonate with all readers.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 BookPage
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Giarratano, Kimberly. "We Know It Was You." BookPage, Oct. 2016, pp. 25+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A463755881/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=cf93d6bb. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
Thrash, Maggie STRANGE LIES Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster (Children's Fiction) $17.99 10, 3 ISBN: 978-1-4814-6203-7
The second installment of Thrash's (We Know It Was You, 2016) Strange Truth series finds teen sleuths Benny Flax and Virginia Leeds embroiled in a series of increasingly twisted and interrelated mysteries. Benny Flax's ambition in founding the Mystery Club at Atlanta's prestigious Winship Academy is to solve mysteries with an aim to seeking the truth, though bringing the guilty parties to justice is not his concern. Virginia Leeds is happy to be his partner as an antidote to the boredom of life as a boarder at Winship, though Benny himself remains a mystery to her. Thrash has perfected the voices of her white protagonists, two oddball outsiders whose quirks come off as natural in the context of her self-assured, madcap storytelling. Their latest case materializes at the school's science expo, when a mysterious drug dealer in the girl's bathroom is upstaged by an apparent freak accident in which DeAndre Bell, the popular African-American student-body president, is gruesomely impaled by a set of deer antlers. This dark chain of events sets Benny and Virginia down a maze of different paths to discover what really happened. Fast-paced and suspenseful, the plotting of this outing is both more plausible and more complicated than the last. The novel concludes on several cliffhangers and loose ends, leaving readers with plenty to ponder. Thrash's brazen characters and dark humor will compel readers forward. (Mystery. 14-adult)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Thrash, Maggie: STRANGE LIES." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Sept. 2017. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A502192047/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=14594296. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
Thrash, Maggie. Strange Lies: Strange Truth, Book 2. Simon Pulse, October 2017. 352p. $17.99. 978-1-4814-6203-7.
Winship Academy, a private school near Atlanta, is a hot mess. Drugs, sex, and violence are rampant in a student body in which most of the students are privileged, selfish, conforming racists. It is here that readers find the two members of the Mystery Club, Benny Flax and Virginia Leeds, honing their sleuthing skills as they try to determine if the horrific maiming of the student body president was an accident or a deliberate assault. As the two quirky detectives navigate the complexities of high school, they begin to discover how much they rely on each other for friendship, intellectual interaction, and a genuine partnership. Their developing relationship is jeopardized when Calvin Harker, the headmasters conflicted and creepy son, devises a plan to escape Winship Academy and recruits Virginia to help.
As in the first book in the Strange Truth series, We Know It Was You (Simon Pulse, 2016/VOYA October 2016), when Benny and Virginia discover who is guilty, no one is charged. Most of the adults in the book are abusive, foolish enablers who model bad behavior. Teenage pregnancy, disgusting racism, rampant bullying, foul language, and unlikeable minor characters making one bad decision after another can distract rather than entertain. Thrash's satiric humor and unabashed critique of the small-minded, vulgar students in her story makes her point, but is still infuriating to read. While Benny and Virginia skillfully uncover the nasty events preceding the "accident" that injured their classmate, unanswered questions appear and the book ends with an outstanding cliffhanger. Thrash's fans will love this installment and eagerly await the next.--Lynne Farrell Stover.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 E L Kurdyla Publishing LLC
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Stover, Lynne Farrell. "Thrash, Maggie. Strange Lies: Strange Truth, Book 2." Voice of Youth Advocates, vol. 40, no. 4, Oct. 2017, p. 66. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A511785056/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=738c4cba. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
THRASH, Maggie. Strange Lies. 352p. S. & S. Oct. 2017. Tr $17.99. ISBN 9781481462037.
Gr 9 Up--The teens at Winship Academy return for their latest mystery: who staged the bizarre deer antler attack at the science expo that nearly killed DeAndre? Sleuths Benny and Virginia employ their Mystery Club (of two) to uncover the truth. Benny quickly suspects a hate crime as DeAndre is one of the only African Americans at Winship. Secret drug deals in the girls' bathroom, the unexplained suspension of a student, and the creepy Headmaster's abusive relationship with his equally creepy son prove threads leading to the truth, yet other plotlines lead nowhere. Benny and Virginia are consumed with solving the mystery for the mystery's sake, not for justice. As in Strange Truth, they discover a murderer in their midst and do nothing but effectively shrug. Thrash employs stereotypes of spoiled, rich white teens; and racist, sexist Southern culture. The only black character is the victimized, poor football player hailing from a family of rubes (in an especially offensive portrayal, DeAndre's uncle cries, "They got real ham biscuits!") who almost completely lacks a voice. In an outlandish scene, a parent-sanctioned, student-run fundraiser involves auctioning tequila shots off girls' stomachs--and all the girls are flattered. The author weaves suspense throughout, but ultimately, these tropes are introduced without nuance and deeper exploration. VERDICT The offensive stereotypes and flat, narcissistic characters demean this book's audience.--Laura Falli, McNeil High School, Austin, TX
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Falli, Laura. "Thrash, Maggie. Strange Lies." School Library Journal, vol. 63, no. 8, Aug. 2017, pp. 108+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A499597931/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=0adb2bdc. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
Thrash, Maggie LOST SOUL, BE AT PEACE Candlewick (Young Adult Informational) $18.99 10, 9 ISBN: 978-0-7636-9419-7
Thrash (Strange Lies, 2017, etc.) returns with a graphic memoir blended with fiction.
A year and a half after Honor Girl (2015) ends, Thrash is a high school junior who has come out as lesbian; she is also depressed and flunking out of her exclusive prep school. She lives a life of ease and plenty with her overbearing, henpecking mother and federal judge father in their sprawling Atlanta home. Her only real sense of responsibility is to her beloved gray cat, Tommi, recently lost. While searching her cavernous house for Tommi, she befriends a ghost--also named Tommy--who lives in stark economic contrast to her. With a bit of insightful investigation, Thrash soon learns more about Tommy's past, her father, and herself. Through an acute lens, Thrash has masterfully captured the tedium and melancholy of being a teenager: the self-doubt and preoccupation, the crushing ennui, and the sense of futility. In one scene, she recalls coming out, expecting this to be the topic of conversation at school, only to be ignored by her peers. Mixing recollections with a supernatural Hamlet-inspired theme, her watercolor-tinged illustrations add a wonderfully ethereal layer to an already nuanced offering. Defying genre boundaries, Thrash has proven herself a capable memoirist able to pinpoint her own pivotal life moments, turn them into art, and take risks with conventions. Nearly all characters present as white.
A thoughtful and compelling exploration of adolescence. (Graphic memoir/fiction. 13-adult)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Thrash, Maggie: LOST SOUL, BE AT PEACE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2018. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A548137944/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e3b10f77. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
Lost Soul, Be at Peace.
By Maggie Thrash. Illus. by the author.
Oct. 2018.192p. Candlemick, paper, $18.99 (9780763694197). Gr. 9-12.741.5.
Thrash follows her debut, Honor Girl (2015), with another memoir, this time chronicling a period of intense isolation and depression during her junior year of high school. Riding a wave of apathy and avoiding the demanding work of her AP classes, she aimlessly wanders the four-story house she shares with her emotionally unavailable parents. Only when her beloved cat disappears is Thrash pushed into action, but her search soon takes on a broader and more deeply felt meaning as she learns more about her family. Thrash's distinctive style, drawn with pen and watercolor pencil, is simple and straightforward. Faces are predominantly expressionless with large-eyed blank stares, but the panels are not without emotion, and the horror-tinged dream sequences are vivid and unsettling. Although the emotional weight of this memoir can feel relentless, much of the tension is resolved toward the end, and readers are left with a hopeful conclusion. This should resonate with readers looking for unusual realistic fiction that doesn't shy away from difficult themes.--Summer Hayes
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
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Hayes, Summer. "Lost Soul, Be at Peace." Booklist, vol. 115, no. 2, 15 Sept. 2018, p. 47. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A556571734/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=f1caf529. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
Thrash, Maggie. Lost Soul, Be at Peace. Candlewick, October 2018, 192p. $18.99. 978-0763694197.
4Q * 4P * M * J * S * (G)
Now a junior in high school, Maggie--whose first love was chronicled in Honor Girl (Candlewick 2015/VOYA October 2015)--struggles to come to terms with the changes that inevitably come with growing up. Her mother, a stereotypical southern socialite, constantly picks on and nags her, while Maggie's workaholic father barely acknowledges her. Wandering around her enormous house one night, looking for her lost cat, Tommi, Maggie discovers a strange but vaguely familiar boy--a ghost who has been haunting her dreams. Unlike her parents, the ghost boy, Thomas, has plenty of time for Maggie, and the two bond during multiple conversations about the challenges of growing up.
Thrash's continuation of her memoir has a slow, dreamy quality. Maggie's isolation--from her family, as well as her fellow students--is in sharp contrast to the close-knit camp experience in Honor Girl. The illustrations, such as a two-page spread of her enormous but empty house, echo this isolation. This visual storytelling continues as Maggie slowly builds connections with her father and also with her dance team, culminating in a powerful set of panels depicting her dance recital. The reader sees Maggie--in dramatic stage makeup--as an integral part of her dance troupe. And in the center of the page is an image of her father, fully present and captivated by his daughter's performance. This examination of how family shapes our lives will appeal to readers of graphic memoirs such as Amy Kurtzweil's Flying Couch (Catapult 2016/VOYA December 2016). --Heather Christensen
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 E L Kurdyla Publishing LLC
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Christensen, Heather. "Thrash, Maggie. Lost Soul, Be at Peace." Voice of Youth Advocates, vol. 41, no. 5, Dec. 2018, p. 74. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A571836507/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=4dca3f78. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
THRASH, Maggie. Lost Soul, Be at Peace. illus. by Maggie Thrash. 192p. Can dlewick. Aug. 2018. Tr $18.99. ISBN 9780763694197.
Gr 8 Up--Picking up a year and a half after the events of her graphic memoir, Honor Girl, Thrash once again chronicles her adolescence, this time injecting her narrative with a dose of the supernatural. Growing up in Atlanta, 16-year-old Maggie feels invisible. She came out as a lesbian at the beginning of the school year, with barely any reaction from classmates, and though she is depressed, her stem father and her oblivious socialite mother are unaware of her anguish. Only her cat makes her smile, but her pet's disappearance sends her deeper into turmoil. Tommy, a ghost only she can see, enters the scene, and the two try to uncover his connection to Maggie and her family. Meanwhile, she bonds with her father as she witnesses the harsh realities he confronts in his work as a judge. The author/illustrator looks back on her teen years with a pitch-perfect blend of caustic humor, melancholy, and tenderness, depicting her younger self's frustration with her wealthy, ignorant cohorts and her growing understanding of her own privilege. Her linework is slightly unpolished, but her manga-esque illustrations brim with emotion; her use of color is particularly inspired. VERDICT Thrash boldly mixes memoir and fiction for a perceptive exploration of her past that will resonate profoundly with readers of Honor Girl, Laurie Halse Anderson and Emily Carroll's Speak: The Graphic Novel, and Katie Green's Lighter Than My Shadow.--Mahnaz Dar, School Library Journal
KEY: * Excellent in relation to other titles on the same subject or in the same genre | Tr Hardcover trade binding | lib. ed. Publisher's library binding | Board Board book | pap. Paperback | e eBook original | BL Bilingual | POP Popular Picks
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Dar, Mahnaz. "THRASH, Maggie. Lost Soul, Be at Peace." School Library Journal, vol. 64, no. 8, Aug. 2018, p. 79. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A548561778/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=0f409758. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
Rainbow Black
Maggie Thrash. Harper Perennial, $18.99 trade paper (416p) ISBN 978-0-06-328687-0
Thrash, best known for the YA graphic memoir Honor Girl, makes her adult debut with a gripping story about the Satanic panic of the 1980s and its impact on a New Hampshire family. Lacey Bond has always known she's a lesbian, thanks in part to the freethinking encouraged by her hippie parents, who run a home daycare called Rainbow Kids. In 1990, when Lacey is 13, her parents are arrested and charged with sexual abuse. The complaints from victims' parents include accusations of Satanism, though the physical evidence amounts to little more than some candles and crystals belonging to Lacey's mother. During the lengthy trial, Lacey's older sister, Eclair, is murdered, and their parents are blamed by the media, though no one is charged. As the harrowing, nonlinear story unfolds, the reader learns more about what led to the case against the Bonds and the details behind Eclair's murder, all while Lacey attempts to find solace with her girlfriend Dylan, who is emotionally and physically abused by her bigoted family. Thrash convinces in her wrenching portrait of a community's intolerance and the resilience of queer love. Readers will be stirred. Agent: Stephen Barr, Writers House. (Mar.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 PWxyz, LLC
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"Rainbow Black." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 1, 8 Jan. 2024, p. 29. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A781166268/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=6e43ddc8. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
Thrash, Maggie RAINBOW BLACK Harper Perennial/HarperCollins (Fiction None) $18.99 3, 19 ISBN: 9780063286870
An acclaimed author of YA fiction (Lost Soul, Be at Peace, 2018, etc.) writes her first novel for adults.
In the summer of 1990, Lacey Bond's life is upended when her parents are accused of committing ritual abuse at their New Hampshire day care center. She and her older sister, Ãclair, do their best to take care of themselves and defend their mother and father, but Lacey ends up in a group home, from which she eventually escapes to help her best--only--friend. It might be hard to imagine how Lacey's life could get worse from here, but it does. Perhaps the first thing to know about this novel is that anyone picking it up because of the satanic panic hook is likely to be disappointed. The fact that her parents are tried and convicted of crimes that are as preposterous as they are horrific certainly makes an impact on Lacey's life, but it's a small part of her story. Thrash packs so much into 400 pages that this novel shouldn't work. There's courtroom drama and family drama. There's murder and mystery. There's a romance complicated by, among other things, the threat of extradition. And holding it all together is an oddly shaped queer coming-of-age narrative. It does work, though, because of Thrash's ability to create compellingly unique characters, starting with her protagonist. It's not difficult to feel sympathy for young Lacey. Not only does she endure terrible tragedy at a young age, but every grownup in her life fails her in one way or another--sometimes spectacularly, sometimes ruthlessly. This is not to say that adolescent Lacey is one-dimensional and, when she becomes an adult, it's easy to see her as the product of her experiences. Beyond this, Thrash does a terrific job of making every character both singular and nuanced. Ãclair, for example, is a wonder, and the lawyer Aaron Feingold is a tragicomic masterpiece.
Thrash turns trauma, injustice, and hideous bad fortune into a story about resilience, reinvention, and love.
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"Thrash, Maggie: RAINBOW BLACK." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A784238274/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=112dcd9e. Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.