Small Damages

by Beth Kephart

Overview

Juno meets Under the Tuscan Sun

It's senior year, and while Kenzie should be looking forward to prom and starting college in the fall, she discovers she's pregnant. Her determination to keep her baby is something her boyfriend and mother do not understand. So she is sent to Spain, where she will live out her pregnancy, and her baby will be adopted by a Spanish couple. No one will ever know.

Alone and resentful in a foreign country, Kenzie is at first sullen and difficult. But as she gets to know Estela, the stubborn old cook, and Esteban, the mysterious young man who cares for the horses, she begins to open her eyes, and her heart, to the beauty that is all around her, and inside her. Kenzie realizes she has some serious choices to make--choices about life, love, and home.

Lyrically told in a way that makes the heat, the colors, and the smells of Spain feel alive, Small Damages is a feast for the heart and the soul, and a coming-of-age novel not easily forgotten.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101572184
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	07/19/2012
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	441 KB
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of more than a dozen books. She teaches creative nonfiction at the University of Pennsylvania. When she's not writing or teaching, she loves to take photographs and to garden. Beth lives in Devon, Pennsylvania.

What People are Saying About This

Rita Williams-Garcia

Small Damages is a wrenching celebration of choice. To read Kephart is to splendidly dream with both eyes open." — Rita Williams-Garcia, author of One Crazy Summer, winner of the Newbery Honor Medal and the Coretta Scott King Award

Kathryn Erskine

As this delicate and luscious novel unfolds, the lines are blurred between love and loss, past and present, real and magical, and even life and death."—Kathryn Erskine, author of National Book Award-winner Mockingbird.

Ruta Sepetys

Stunning. Kephart's lyrical prose lingers with you long after the final page. I simply didn't want it to end.— Ruta Sepetys, author of New York Times bestseller, Between Shades of Gray

Editorial Reviews

"Dreamlike" is one word for Beth Kephart's latest novel, Small Damages, in which an American teenager is exiled to Spain after she gets pregnant. Her percolating story emerges through Kep­hart's lilting prose in that same hazy way you'd meander through the narrow white streets of Seville in the noontime sun or confront the hot, dry winds, redolent of foreign smells and flavors, on a ranch in the Spanish countryside. The reader is lost and found and lost and found again.
—Jen Doll

The New York Times Book Review

As Kenzie’s senior year of high school begins, her beloved father dies suddenly. Her mother’s coping mechanisms—pack his things, start a business, join Match .com—push Kenzie closer to her friend Kevin, and by spring, she’s pregnant. Kenzie’s mother’s response (which feels more 1896 than 1996, when the story is set) is to arrange for Kenzie to move to a bull farm in southern Spain, where she’ll work until the baby is born and given up for adoption. The wrinkle in this soulless plan is that Kenzie is conflicted; her story is written as a tender, honest letter to her unborn child. Kenzie arrives in Spain sullen and resentful—she’s chopping onions with Estela, the farm’s cook, while her friends are at the Jersey Shore—and the distance brings her predicament into sharp relief. Estela is a better mother than her biological one; Esteban, the teen in charge of horses, a more standup guy than Yale-bound Kevin. This beautifully written “summer of transformation” story will have readers feeling as torn about Kenzie’s choice as she is. Ages 14–up. Agent: Amy Rennert, the Amy Rennert Agency. (July)

Publishers Weekly

Lovely” —The Los Angeles Times

“Stunning. Kephart’s lyrical prose lingers with you long after the final page. I simply didn’t want it to end.”—Ruta Sepetys, author of the New York Times bestseller Between Shades of Gray

“As this delicate and luscious novel unfolds, the lines are blurred between love and loss, past and present, real and magical, and even life and death.”—Kathryn Erskine, author of National Book Award winner Mockingbird

“‘Dreamlike’ is one word for Small Damages…[Kenzie’s] percolating story emerges through Kephart’s lilting prose in the same hazy way you’d meander through the narrow white streets of Seville…The novel is a story about choices…but also about finding one’s self.” —New York Times Book Review

“ Kephart is a linguistic Midas — everything she puts to paper is golden, including this gem.” —Family Circle

“[Kephart’s] prose is nearly poetic… it all works to create her own vivid style.” —Romantic Times Book Reviews

"This beautifully written ‘summer of transformation’ story will have readers feeling as torn about Kenzie’s choice as she is.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Lovely and unusual—at once epic and intimate.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“A magical story.” —VOYA

“Beautifully told, the characters’ stories are soulful and compelling, and the setting is rich and alive.” —SLJ

“Kephart has created a lyrical, beautiful story about a young woman at a turning point, struggling to reconcile her choices, find her place in the world and discover the true meaning of family.” —BookPage

“As soon as the book ends, we want to begin it again.” —Shelf Awareness

From the Publisher

"Small Damages is a wrenching celebration of choice. To read Kephart is to splendidly dream with both eyes open." — Rita Williams-Garcia, author of One Crazy Summer, winner of the Newbery Honor Medal and the Coretta Scott King Award

Rita Williams-Garcia

Kephart is a linguistic Midas — everything she puts to paper is golden, including this gem.

Family Circle

We wish to slow down, breathe in the smell of Estela's paella, the scent of the orange trees. As soon as the book ends, we want to begin it again.

Shelf Awareness

Escape to Spain with Beth Kephart’s Small Damages.”

BELLA Magazine

"As this delicate and luscious novel unfolds, the lines are blurred between love and loss, past and present, real and magical, and even life and death."—Kathryn Erskine, author of National Book Award-winner Mockingbird.

Kathryn Erskine

"Stunning. Kephart's lyrical prose lingers with you long after the final page. I simply didn't want it to end."— Ruta Sepetys, author of New York Times bestseller, Between Shades of Gray

Ruta Sepetys

Kephart has created a lyrical, beautiful story about a young woman at a turning point, struggling to reconcile her choices, find her place in the world and discover the true meaning of family.”

BookPage

Lovely” — The Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

‘Dreamlike’ is one word for ‘Small Damages’…[Kenzie’s] percolating story emerges through Kephart’s lilting prose in the same hazy way you’d meander through the narrow white streets of Seville…The reader is lost and found and lost and found again.”

New York Times Book Review

Escape to Spain with Beth Kephart’s Small Damages.

Bella Magazine

Gr 9 Up—Kenzie is 18 and pregnant, much to the embarrassment of her mother and her Yale-bound boyfriend, Kevin. Feeling helpless and alone, she submits to her mother's plan to keep the mistake hidden by going to stay with friends of friends in Spain for the duration of the pregnancy and giving up the baby to adoptive parents. In a daze, Kenzie finds herself on a dusty bull farm, Los Nietos, hot and lonely, experiencing a lifestyle that is completely different from her former life. But it is in this unknown landscape that the young woman finds the support that she lacks at home. The cranky old cook, Estela, and the mysterious young horseman, Esteban, become the nurturing mother and attentive friend that Kenzie yearns for, and she becomes the kind of person who can take care of herself and her baby. Beautifully told, the characters' stories are soulful and compelling, and the setting is rich and alive. While the subject matter might seem familiar, even overdone, this story is unexpectedly tender and original, never falling prey to cliché or the trappings of the typical teen problem novel. Or if it does—the moodiness, the somewhat easy resolution—the style is so engaging that the tale is still fulfilling.—Jennifer Miskec, Longwood University, Farmville, VA

School Library Journal

A young woman is forced into unexpected territory when she is packed off to a vividly imagined, shimmering Spanish countryside in order to conceal an unexpected pregnancy. Provided by her mother with only the barest of details about a couple that wishes to adopt her baby, Kenzie finds herself an unofficial apprentice in the kitchen of the home of a successful bull breeder connected to the prospective adoptive parents-- a world away from where the talented filmmaker expected to be following her high school graduation. In an introspective first-person narration, Kenzie's story effortlessly unfolds. Her initially strained relationship with terse Estela, the marvelous chef charged with her safekeeping, eventually melts into a mutual trust. Readers will sympathize deeply with Kenzie's emptiness over her father's death, which led the way to a loving but uncommitted relationship with her baby's father, a longtime friend. Parallel to Estela's history is a tale set against Franco's rule, which poignantly serves to help Kenzie sort through her numbed confusion. Characters are never simple in this gorgeous landscape so masterfully described by National Book Award–finalist Kephart; fully engaging in their lives--touched as they are by gypsies and bullfighters and the tragedy of war--will require an audience that is willing to be swept up by unfettered romanticism. Lovely and unusual--at once epic and intimate. (Fiction. 13 & up)

Kirkus Reviews