Rainbow Black

January 8, 2024
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, Éclair, 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 Éclair’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.

February 1, 2024
Lacey is wholly unprepared when the Satanic Panic comes for her parents. They run a day care on their New Hampshire farm until children, under the influence of hypnosis and prosecutorial prodding, begin making extreme accusations of abuse and occult practices. As Lacey's charismatic older sister commands the media spotlight and both their parents are imprisoned, Lacey is left to navigate both the court and the court of public opinion. Years later, Lacey has a new identity in a new country, working as a law clerk in Montreal. She and her girlfriend fled there after the hype surrounding the trial took a deadly turn. But the past refuses to stay buried. In this stunning and intense adult debut from YA author Thrash, Lacey is a nuanced character whose complex inner life as both a teen and a woman injects urgency into every hurdle she faces. At once a rivetingly dramatic procedural and an intimate portrait of a relationship forged in trauma, Rainbow Black boldly confronts the lingering shadows of guilt, betrayal, and secrecy.

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March 1, 2024
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, �clair, 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. �clair, 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.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.