Synopsis
Wendell “Stony” Stoneking is not one to worry. Everyone likes him. His girlfriend is gorgeous and very willing to please—anytime, anywhere. He is the star of his high school football team. And when he graduates, there’s a steady job in the gravel quarry waiting for him. Then he meets Robyn, a single mom with a dark past. Suddenly Stony is more bothered than he has been in a long time—not only by the violence Robyn has endured, but by the danger she could put him in. For the first time, Stony reflects on his own life, his broken family, and the dizzying notion of a wide-open future.
Evocatively set in rural Iowa, Derailed is the story of what happens when you open your eyes and start to care enough to risk everything.
Ed Goldberg - VOYA
Stony, high school senior and small town football star, might be ineligible to play because of a failing grade. Enter Robyn, his student tutor and an unwed mother, for whom Stony develops a crush. His marriage-minded girlfriend is obviously not happy. Add his guidance counselor, who tells Stony that he is smart enough to escape his small town and the quarry job that awaits him, like it did his father and grandfather before him. He merely needs to apply himself. Thus, three weeks into his senior year, Stony has an epiphany and decides to go to college. When Robyn's psychotic ex-boyfriend and father of her child is released from prison for raping her, he tracks her down and kidnaps their child as revenge. This book derailed from page one. It is difficult to care about the three or four weeks of Stony's trite life chronicled here. The story has everything: sex, drugs, vandalism, psychotic boyfriends, death of a younger sibling, alcoholic parents, unwed mothers. The author crams every issue into one book. Poorly written, his narrative contains phrases such as "ass-kicking convincingly" to describe a football game win. The dialogue is unnatural, characters are uninteresting, and the plot is predictable and unrealistic. Situations do not make sense, like Stony's brainy teammate Brian, who takes accelerated classes, being excited about enrolling in community college to play football. The only positive is that the book is an easy read. The positive does not outweigh the negatives, however. VOYA CODES: 2Q 3P S (Better editing or work by the author might have warranted a 3Q; Will appeal with pushing; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2006, Flux/Llewellyn, 258p., Trade pb. Ages 15 to 18.