You Don't Have To Die In The End: A Novel

by Anita Daher

Overview

Nominated for the Forest of Reading White Pine Award!

Shortlisted for the McNally Robinson Book for Young People Award!

Eugenia Grimm is a tough girl living in a tough town at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. She drinks and fights and pushes against expectations. She is also hurting: after her father died by suicide, her older brothers drifted away and her mother up and left.

After a last-straw violent incident and faced with the possibility of incarceration, she is sentenced to time at an Intensive Support and Supervision Program located at a remote mountain ranch. There, she begins to make connections, explore difficult truths, and might even turn things around—until a series of events pull her into a dark spiral she may not have the strength to resist.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781773370446
Publisher:	Great Plains Publications
Publication date:	04/30/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	943 KB
Age Range:	12 Years

About the Author

Anita Daher has been entrenched in the book publishing industry since 1995 writing middle grade and teen novels, including Wonder Horse, Two Foot Punch, and Racing for Diamonds. In 2007 she received the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Author. Her most recent novel, Forgetting How to Breathe, was shortlisted for the 2019 IODE Violet Downey Award. Aside from short stints as grave-plot seller, tour guide, and children's party clown, she's worked in aviation, publishing, and broadcasting. When not word wrangling she enjoys inhabiting characters on stage and screen. Anita lives and writes in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Editorial Reviews

"A provocative and compelling story that will leave you both emotionally raw, and satisfied.” —Eric Walters, Author of Walking Home, The Rule of Three


"Highly Recommended: ...many serious themes are woven into the story, but there is also the wonderful appreciation of what can be achieved if only people are given the time, encouragement and incentive to work out their problems and improve their lives..." — Ann Ketcheson, CM Magazine


"Daher paints a vivid and convincing picture here of a young person with a complicated and tragic history attempting to straighten out her life." —Helen Norrie, Winnipeg Free Press

"[…] an important read that awards girls the right and space to feel and process anger." —Ali Bryan, 49th Shelf

From the Publisher

2020-03-15
A juvenile offender is sent to a western Canadian ranch rehabilitation program.

Eugenia Grimm is 16 and a high school dropout. Her depressed father died by suicide when she was 8, her mother walked out when she was 14, and she lives with her eldest brother, Darcy, and his young family. Her other brother, Jackson, is an alcoholic ne’er-do-well. Unfortunately, Eugenia seems to be following in his footsteps. After a young woman spits on Eugenia’s best friend, Luda, and Eugenia attacks her, she is given the chance to attend an alternative program on a ranch rather than being incarcerated. Eugenia has to learn how to work with the wild horses as well as attend therapy sessions. Trust, respect for others (both human and equine), and cooperation with staff come hard as the teens struggle with their individual issues. All are scarred—by fear, mental health issues, and abandonment—but are working toward their visions of a better life. A few hints at heterosexual romance, disappointment in Luda’s friendship, and some dangerous moments with a horse round out the action, but this first-person narrative tells too much and shows too little. Eugenia experiences significant emotional turnaround in an unrealistically short time, and she and other characters never fully come to life. The characters present white except for Indigenous ranch guide Hayden, who is Nisga’a; Luda is queer and nonbinary.

A heavy-handed story about dysfunctional families. (Fiction. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews