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ABRAMS BOOKS - Cat Winters

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185 pages

English

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A thrilling reimagining of Shakespeares Hamlet, The Steep and Thorny Way tells the story of a murder most foul and the mighty power of love and acceptance in a state gone terribly rotten. A 1920s Oregon is not a welcoming place for Hanalee Denney, the daughter of a white woman and an African-American man. She has almost no rights by law, and the Ku Klux Klan breeds fear and hatred in even Hanalees oldest friendships. Plus, her father, Hank Denney, died a year ago, hit by a drunk-driving teenager. Now her fathers killer is out of jail and back in town, and he claims that Hanalees father wasnt killed by the accident at all but, instead, was poisoned by the doctor who looked after himawho happens to be Hanalees new stepfather. A The only way for Hanalee to get the answers she needs is to ask Hank himself, a ahainta wandering the roads at night.

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Publié par	ABRAMS BOOKS
Date de parution	08 mars 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781613129067
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

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PUBLISHER S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Winters, Cat. Title: The steep and thorny way / by Cat Winters. Description: New York : Amulet Books, 2016. | Summary: A sixteen-year-old biracial girl in rural Oregon in the 1920s searches for the truth about her father s death while avoiding trouble from the Ku Klux Klan in this YA historical novel inspired by Shakespeare s Hamlet -Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2015022705 | ISBN 9781419719158 (hardback) | eISBN: 9781613129067 Subjects: | CYAC: Prejudices-Fiction. | Murder-Fiction. | Ghosts-Fiction. | Racially mixed people-Fiction. | Oregon-History-20th century-Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Historical / United States / 20th Century. | JUVENILE FICTION / Horror Ghost Stories. | JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Prejudice Racism. Classification: LCC PZ7.W76673 St 2016 | DDC [Fic]-dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015022705
Text copyright 2016 Catherine Karp Jacket and title page photography 2016 Symon Chow Book design by Maria T. Middleton
For image credits, see this page .
Published in 2016 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Amulet Books and Amulet Paperbacks are registered trademarks of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.

115 West 18th Street New York, NY 10011 www.abramsbooks.com
IN LOVING MEMORY OF MY COUSIN JIMMY HACKER
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1: MURDER MOST FOUL
CHAPTER 2: LESS THAN KIND
CHAPTER 3: DESPERATE WITH IMAGINATION
CHAPTER 4: SOMETHING IS ROTTEN
CHAPTER 5: WHERE WILT THOU LEAD ME?
CHAPTER 6: WILD AND WHIRLING
CHAPTER 7: THOU HAST THY FATHER MUCH OFFENDED
CHAPTER 8: THE PLAY S THE THING
CHAPTER 9: SEE WHAT I SEE
CHAPTER 10: THE MOUSETRAP
CHAPTER 11: WITH FIERY QUICKNESS
CHAPTER 12: HOW UNWORTHY A THING YOU MAKE OF ME
CHAPTER 13: THE PRIMROSE PATH
CHAPTER 14: CAST THY NIGHTED COLOR OFF
CHAPTER 15: WHO IS T THAT CAN INFORM ME?
CHAPTER 16: NOBLE DUST
CHAPTER 17: THE WEEPING BROOK
CHAPTER 18: DESPERATE UNDERTAKINGS
CHAPTER 19: NEVER DOUBT I LOVE
CHAPTER 20: BE EVEN AND DIRECT WITH ME
CHAPTER 21: MOST UNNATURAL MURDER
CHAPTER 22: O HEAVY BURDEN
CHAPTER 23: THE DEVIL TAKE THY SOUL
CHAPTER 24: THAT IT SHOULD COME TO THIS
CHAPTER 25: A VERY PALPABLE HIT
CHAPTER 26: HAD I BUT TIME
CHAPTER 27: THE REST IS SILENCE
CHAPTER 28: REST, PERTURBED SPIRIT
CHAPTER 29: TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE
AUTHOR S NOTE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
IMAGE CREDITS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DO NOT, AS SOME
UNGRACIOUS
PASTORS DO,
SHOW ME THE
STEEP AND
THORNY
WAY TO
HEAVEN,
WHILES, LIKE
A PUFFED AND
RECKLESS
LIBERTINE,
HIMSELF THE
PRIMROSE PATH
OF DALLIANCE
TREADS . . .
- HAMLET
DRAMATIS PERSONAE

H ANALEE D ENNEY , daughter to the late Hank Denney, and stepdaughter to Clyde Koning
G RETA K ONING , mother to Hanalee, and wife to Clyde Koning
G HOST of Hank Denney
C LYDE K ONING , physician
F LEUR P AULISSEN , friend to Hanalee, and sister to Laurence
L AURENCE P AULISSEN , brother to Fleur
P OLLY P AULISSEN , widow, and mother to Fleur and Laurence
J OE A DDER , accused of the murder of Hank Denney
R EVEREND AND M RS . A DDER , parents to Joe and six other children
M ILDRED M ARKS , a neighbor
B ERNICE M ARKS , younger sister to Mildred
M RS . M ARKS , widow, and mother to Mildred, Bernice, and seven other children
S HERIFF R INK , head law enforcer
D EPUTY F ORTAINE , assistant to Sheriff Rink
R OBBIE AND G IL W ITTEN , twin brothers, and friends to Laurence
M R. AND M RS . F RANKLIN , restaurateurs
O PAL R ICKERT , sweetheart to Laurence
H ARRY C ORNELIUS , A L V OLTMAN , O SCAR AND C HESTER K LEIN , local boys
S CENE : Elston, Oregon

WASHINGTON COUNTY, OREGON, EARLY 1900 s .
CHAPTER 1

MURDER MOST FOUL
JULY 1, 1923
I DREW A DEEP BREATH AND MARCHED into the woods behind my house with a two-barreled pistol hidden beneath my blue cotton skirt. The pocket-size derringer rode against my outer right thigh, tucked inside a holster that had, according to the boy who d given it to me, once belonged to a lady bootlegger who d been arrested with three different guns strapped to her legs. Twigs snapped beneath my shoes. My eyes watered and burned. The air tasted of damp earth and metal.
Several yards ahead, amid a cluster of maples blanketed in scaly green lichen, stood a fir tree blackened by lightning. If I turned right on the deer trail next to that tree and followed a line of ferns, I d find myself amid rows of shriveled grapevines in the shut-down vineyard belonging to my closest friend, Fleur, her older brother, Laurence, and their war-widowed mama.
But I didn t turn.
I kept trekking toward the little white shed that hid the murderer Joe Adder.
Fleur s whispers from church that morning ran through my head, nearly tipping me off balance during my clamber across moss-slick rocks in the creek. Reverend Adder doesn t even want his boy around anymore, she had told me before the sermon, her face bent close to mine, fine blond hair brushing across her cheeks. He won t let Joe back in the house with the rest of the kids. Laurence is hiding him in our old shed. And Joe wants to talk to you. He s got something to say about the night his car hit your father.
I broke away from the creek and hiked up a short embankment covered in sedges and rushes that tickled my bare shins. At the top of the bank, about twenty-five feet away, sat a little white structure built of plaster and wood. Before he left for the Great War, Fleur s father used to store his fishing gear and liquor in the place, and he sometimes invited my father over for a glass of whiskey, even after Oregon went bone-dry in 1916. Bigleaf maples hugged the rain-beaten shingles with arms covered in leaves as bright green as under-ripe apples. A stovepipe poked out from the roof, and I smelled the sharp scent of leftover ashes-the ghost of a fire Joe must have lit the night before, when the temperature dropped into the fifties.
I came to a stop in front of the shed, my pulse pounding in the side of my throat. My scalp sweltered beneath my knitted blue hat, along with the long brown curls I d stuffed and pinned inside. I leaned over and drew the hem of my skirt above my right knee, exposing the worn leather of the holster. I took another deep breath and wiggled the little derringer out of its hiding place.
With my legs spread apart, I stood up straight and pointed the pistol at the shed s closed door. Are you in there, Joe?
A hawk screeched from high above the trees, and some sort of animal splashed in the pond that lay beyond the shed and the foliage. But I didn t hear one single peep out of Joe Adder.
Joe? I asked again, this time in as loud and deep a voice as I could muster. Tree-trunk strong, I sounded. Sticky sweat rolled down my cheeks, and my legs refused to stop rocking back and forth. Are you in there?
Who s there?
I gripped the pistol with both my hands. The voice I heard was a husky growl that couldn t have belonged to clean-cut, preacher s-boy Joe, from what I remembered of him. It and a splashing sound seemed to come from the pond, not the shed.
Who s there? he asked again. I heard another splash.
I lowered the pistol to my side and crept around to the back of the shed, feeling my tongue dry up from panting. I pushed past a tangle of blackberry bushes, pricking a thumb on a thorn, and came to a stop on the edge of the bank. My feet teetered on the gnarled white root of a birch.
In the pond, submerged up to his navel in the murky green water, stood a tanned and naked Joe Adder, arms akimbo, a lock of dark brown hair hanging over his right eye. His shoulders were broad and sturdy, his biceps surprisingly muscular, as though prison had worked that scrawny little white boy hard.
My mouth fell open, and my stomach gave an odd jump. The last time I d seen Joe, back in February 1921, seventeen months earlier, he d been a slick-haired, sixteen-year-old kid in a fancy black suit, blubbering on a courthouse bench between his mama and daddy.
This new version of my father s killer-now just a few months shy of his eighteenth birthday, almost brawny, his hair tousled and wild-peered at me without blinking. Drops of water plunked to the pond s surface from his elbows.
You don t want to shoot me, Hanalee, he said in that husky voice of his. I don t recommend prison to anyone but the devils who threw me in there.
I pointed the pistol at his bare chest, my right fingers wrapped around the grip. If you had run over and killed a white man with your daddy s Model T, I said, you d still be behind bars, serving your full two years . . . and more.
I didn t kill anyone.
I bet you don t know this -I shifted my weight from one leg to the other- but people tell ghost stories about my father wandering the road where you ran him down, and I hate those tales with a powerful passion.
I m sorry, but-
But those stories don t make me half as sick as you standing there, saying you didn t kill anyone. If you didn t kill him, you no-good liar, then why didn t you defend yourself at your trial?
Joe sank down into the water and let his chin graze the surface. Long, thick lashes framed his brown eyes, and he