Sweetgirl audiobook

I could see the baby was shrieking, but its cries were buried by the wind. The snow blew in sideways, edged across the floor and dusted the baby’s cheeks with frost. The baby’s eyes darted in a side-to-side panic as it reached up with trembling hands and searched for something to grasp. I ran toward it. 16 year old Percy James had gone looking for her missing mother, yet again, and both hoped and feared she might find her at the home of Shelton Potter, local source for substances of the illegal sort. Shelton was not exactly the brightest light wherever he happened to be. And he had a propensity to violence. Even did time for hospitalizing a fellow bar patron who committed the social faux pas of calling him “jughead.” Shelton was the tiniest bit sensitive about the size of his admittedly triple-X cranium. Shelton and his gf were on the far side of conscious, so Percy had a look about. Mom was not to be found, but the thought of that baby freezing to death while druggies dozed was too much, so Percy did the right thing, and snatched the infant from the jaws of an icy death. Yeah, I guess she could have, you know, shut the window. But the dead, decaying dog in the house and the state of its adult inhabitants made moving the child to a safe location a no-brainer. And so begins our tale. Travis Mulhauser - from his GR pageYou might want to dress warm when you settle in to read Sweet Girl. A sweater at least. Make sure the windows are closed tight, and bring out a throw to toss over your feet and legs. And it probably wouldn’t hurt to have a cup with steaming liquid in it near at hand, enhanced or not. It was the burning kind of cold. A tear had opened in my lip and I put my tongue to it and tasted the salty, pooling blood. There was already a throb and tingle in my toes and the air torched my lungs just to breathe it. I looked back after a minute and could not see the pinewoods or tell the falling snow in the fields from what was wind-thrown. Travis Milhauser should know. He grew up there, in Petoskey, a booming metropolis of about 6,000 souls, up about where the fingernail of your ring-finger might be if it were inside the Michigan mitten, and hadn’t gone black and fallen off. He does not live there any longer, but it is damned clear that he remembers how it feels. His ability to portray and sustain the feeling of bloody-fracking-freezing is one of the strengths of Sweet Girl. He is equally adept at communicating a feeling of isolation. Not only are the places where his characters live often at the fringes of what passes for civilization, the characters themselves contend with the remoteness of their existence. You might want to encourage a loved one to sit and read with you, or invite a pet to hang out by your side or on your lap for a bit. I would leave out the back and head straight for Portis’s place. My truck was just as far away from the farmhouse as the cabin, and all of it uphill. If Shelton or the girl bothered to notice the baby was gone they’d fire up the sleds and the truck and head right for the road I’d come in on. No, the best thing was to go and get Portis. Have him drive us to the hospital in his Dakota. Another powerful element in Sweet Girl is Mulhauser’s portrayal of the relationship between Percy and the man to whom she turns for help. If the name Portis rings a bell, it is worth recalling that it was author Charles Portis who wrote a great American novel called True Grit. Young Percy James, like Mattie Ross before her, turns to an older, somewhat dodgy, but trustworthy man to help her with her situation. Portis Dale is the closest thing she has to a father, he having been a much loved one-time cohabitant with her mother for several years. He has had issues with substances himself, mostly of the brown liquid variety, and is not exactly someone you would describe as squeaky clean. But their bond is strong. And while Rooster Cogburn’s motivations may have been at least monetary before developing into something else, this Portis has no financial skin in the game. The conversation between the two crackles, as Percy, while only 16, is a hard 16, having had to cope with her meth-head mother for years and does not shy away from going head-to-head with her champion. Percy has seen maybe too much of the cold underside of life for someone her age. She is a strong female character, no one’s notion of a flighty teen, pining after some boy. She has her vulnerabilities but has a solid core that guides her through. It is very easy to see in Percy an echo of another working class teen facing dire circumstances, 17-year-old Ree Dolly of Winter’s Bone. Percy is as well-realized.J-Law as Ree Dolly – Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross - from LA TimesOf course getting baby Jenna to safety would be difficult enough, given the impending blizzard. But when Shelton comes to and finds the baby gone, he calls in his troops to beat the bushes. Uh-ohAnother strength in Sweet Girl is the portrayal of the culture, or at least a part of it, in the land of the great water. With industry having mostly packed up, the folks left behind have to make do somehow, and tending to the better-off sorts who have been buying up the shorefront for summer vacations is not quite enough. A lively drug trade involves not only the locals, but new Michiganders, from south of the Rio Grande. Who are all these people and how do they live? You get a sense. While it would have been no trick to have made the thugs cartoonish (ok, a couple of them are, and there a few of comedic moments that might fuel an occasional outburst of “what a schmuck!”), Shelton, while intellectually and morally challenged, is shown to have a third dimension. You could even feel sorry for him at times. As for Percy’s mama, where the hell is she? Can Percy save her if she finds her? Is she worth saving? What does the future hold for Percy? Does she even have a future? Can Percy even save herself?I had few gripes in reading this book. But one thing that irked was that a significant event that occurs between Portis and one of his thugs is reported to Percy by Portis after the fact. It really should have been shown on stage instead of off. I suppose there are some who will see the connections between this book, True Grit, and Winter’s Bone and bemoan any similarities. I did not feel that way. Every tale that pairs a woman-child with a much older man is not the same story. The richness of the characterizations makes this one sing. The accomplished creation of the north Michigan environment as a character as important as Percy or Portis, lends heft to the work. While the horrors of the world of drug abuse are quite chilling, and while the world in which this battle plays out is numbingly cold, and darkly isolated, Sweet Girl is an incredibly warm read, one that appreciates and communicates both innocence and courage. You will love Percy and Portis and feel engaged in their battles with dark forces, natural and hominid. How sweet it is.Review first posted – 11/13/2015Publication Date – 2/2/2016=============================EXTRA STUFFLinks to the author’s personal, and Twitter pages

this was pitched to me (by greg) as "a funny Winter's Bone."and that's a very good description, although "funny" is relative, and it's more "funny used to offset otherwise horrible things" and "funny compared to other grit lit." but considering the plot of the story, it's amazing there's anything funny about it at all: a sixteen-year-old girl named percy james enters a known meth house looking for her relapsed mother carletta. she does not find her but she does find a dead dog, a live cat, two passed-out junkies, and a distressed baby girl by an open window needing to be changed and slowly being covered by snow. percy rescues the baby, taking off on foot into the worsening michigan blizzard, where she enlists the help of the kindly-gruff portis dale and his faithful wolfdog, resulting in the lot of them being pursued by criminals with guns.hahhahhahaa??but humor does find a way to manifest - in percy's wry sardonic, occasionally overformal voice: while the particulars of a given calamity may be impossible to predict, while I could never say I expected to find a baby in the bedroom, chaos itself was always confirmation of the dread I carried certain in my bones. in the friendly banter between percy and portis, who had once nearly become percy's stepfather:"It's pretty, " I said. "But I swear I am never coming back up on this hill.""This hill is cursed," said Portis. "There isn't a doubt.""You're the one that lives here.""I don't so much live as I do exist.""That's deep.""I wish it were," he said.and in the straight-up slapstick of shelton potter's storyline. shelton is the owner of the aforementioned meth house, and he returns to consciousness to find the baby gone and her mother still zonked out, blissfully unaware. shelton sets out to be the hero of his own story, but his frequent pauses to do nitrous, smoke pot, mourn his faithful dog old bo, and zone out in many drug-related lacunae make him less … efficient a champion.(view spoiler)[ and that's probably the best part of the novel - this subversion of the grit lit norm, which would ordinarily depict shelton as this preternaturally unstoppable adversary; a ruthless criminal pursuing percy and portis with strategic cunning and mastery of weapons, giving the novel all its tension and edge-of-your-seat action. instead, shelton is too hapless to be a proper villain (not that shelton ever would have seen himself in the role of the villain), and it's a more realistic depiction of the level of competence a long-term user of meth would be likely to exhibit. i love how the reader's expectations are deflated a bit - you're bracing yourself for this confrontation, and it never comes from the direction you've been trained to prepare for. (hide spoiler)]as far as the Winter's Bone part, mulhauser is definitely showcasing that wonderful balance between lyrical and harsh that i so enjoy in woodrell's prose:Up ahead I watched as a swarm of chickadees broke from a jack pine, scattering tiny mists of snow as they searched out neighboring trees. And that's the thing about Cutler - it's a hard place, but sometimes it's so damn pretty you don't know what to do with it all.and percy is a wonderfully clear-eyed protagonist in the same vein as w.b.'s ree; a teenager who's seen more and lived more and had to become more than most kids her age, someone who's inherently good-hearted, but also resigned to certain realities:We walked among the rows of graves, a bunch of cement headstones with some named etched in. Sorry plots that were not graced with the lamenting angels and Jesus statues that held court across the highway. In the end, you can't even die your way out of being poor.who is able to love her mother deeply but still see through her bullshit:Carletta had a way of denying certain realities to make her life seem like more than it was, which was sort of like coping, but was mostly just another way to lie.another great woodrelly skill he has is in the vividness of his landscape. ohhhhhhh, michigan. you are so cold! mulhauser is masterful at bringing this environment to life and making readers feel percy's long trudge through the blizzard, feet freezing in boots, the weight of a baby curling her forward, the weight of her other worries dogging her every step. it's perfect, and while i may be the only one jealous of such freezing surroundings here in my pathetic 72-degrees-on-christmas-eve-new-york "winter," there's no denying that his description of it is powerful and effective. in a lot of ways this story is very familiar, at least to someone who reads *a lot* in this particular grit lit vein, but mulhauser brings his own spin to the meth and guns and backwoods justice template. female-driven grit lit is not uncommon, but it's definitely less common, and i really appreciated percy's authentic balance between competence and vulnerability. this isn't the high moralistic tone of True Grit or the "fuck you and all your fuckery" badass tone of Young God; it's in the middle, where it makes sense and where books like Winter's Bone and the The Weight of Blood live. so greg was right - it is funny. and touching. and also filled with horrible horrible things. and it gets bonus points for multiple warren zevon mentions. and for wolfdog and old bo. and all of it, really. points all around for another strong debut novel. if you bothered to click on that link up top, just imagine that song playing at top volume over and over for days. don't do meth, kids.come to my blog!["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>

I really liked this book, another one set in Michigan, where I live. Very atmospheric novel that kept me completely engaged as I seemed to be on the cold snowy journey to safety along with two of the main characters and an infant taken from a drug house. So much crazy stuff happens along the way!! IJust have to say... I LOVED Portis!!!!

It's a dark story in so many ways but there's one light that shines amidst the darkness and the drugs and death and that light is Percy James . It's a powerful, riveting story that had me from the first page and sixteen year old Percy James became a favorite character for me almost immediately. It's been a tough life with her alcohol and drug addicted mother Carletta, but she loves her mother and needs to find her . In her search, she finds a neglected baby that she is determined to save . But it is in this selfless goal that the beauty of the story lies - the act of saving some else becomes the very thing that saves Percy from this place .We come across some rough characters- Shelton Potter , dealer and addict and Portis Dale , rough but soft for Percy and it becomes evident that he'd do anything to help Percy . The points of view alternate between Percy's and Shelton Potter. From Percy's perspective we learn that she is smart and wise beyond her years and that she has led too tough a life that gives her the burden of watching out for her drug addicted mother and her maturity and goodness is evident in the responsibility of caring for this neglected baby. From Shelton Potter's point of view we see the darkest side of the drug dealing and addiction.Things quickly spiral out of control in this riveting ordeal that Percy finds herself in with her attempt to save baby Jenna . It is not lost on this reader how Percy is desperately trying to insure that Jenna does not have the life that she had. A wonderful story where hope can be found in a place otherwise hopeless. A high recommendation for Travis Mulhauser's debut novel. Hoping for more from him .Thanks to HarperCollins and Edelweiss.

A wonderful page turner...It was the middle of January....[brrrrr]....in Cutler County, Michigan. We meet sixteen year old Percy James....( bold and fearless)Her Mama was missing — and she was sick and tired sittin’ round worrying and wondering where she was. With harsh chilly snowy elements, Percy sets out to find Mama. “I knew the ice was likely to hold, but say it didn’t? One misstep And I could be in a bad way quick—ice cracking as the splits spread like taproots and opened into breaks”. “I would have to hike the rest of the way through the woods, then cross open land to get to the farm house. It would be cold and dark and purely miserable, but I keep walking until I got there because I didn’t have a choice. Carletta had to be got”. “Mama had seen fit to steal my winter coat and gloves the night she disappeared, which meant I would be making the trek in my hoodie and bluejeans. An injustice that might have angered me if I thought it would do any good”. Percy arrives at Sheldon Potter’s farmhouse cabin - finds him and Kayla Hawthorn both crashed out - drugged out - asleep - on a filthy living room floor.....home of cocaine, marijuana, and home-cooked methamphetamines. Upstairs, baby ....[a sweetgirl]....was in a bassinet. Jenna was the name on the bassinet. Between whiskey- cigarettes - a baby - and blistering snow....is a page turner with fabulous atmosphere - textured characters- in-your-face dialogue....and one heck of a wonderful story. Sample dialogue...[Percy makes it over to Portis Dale’s place...probably as close to a father she’s ever known] “I told him Mama had gone missing and that her Bonneville was parked out front of Sheldons but that she was not inside. I’d come in the back door and found the baby upstairs while Sheldon and the mother were passed out in the living room. I described the bassinet by the open window and how the snow was slanting in. I told him Sheldon and the woman hadn’t moved an inch and then I was absolutely certain nobody had seen me”. “Gentry came by, I said. He saw Mama when he was up there delivering a keg”. “And what are you doing cavorting with the likes of Gentry?” “He’s my friend, I said. He sells me cigarettes at the store”. “You’re sixteen years old, last time I checked”. “You gave me Marlboro Reds when I was twelve”. “That was to keep you from stealing them”. “What’s The difference?” “It don’t even matter, Portis said, and waved his hand. Just stay the hell away from that Gentry. He’s a thirty-year-old man and I can guarantee he’s the type that only does a favor cause he’s expecting a pay back in return. And you know what kind of payback I mean”. “He’s twenty-three, I said. And gay”. “Gay nothing, Portis said. Gay ain’t always what it looks like on the surface”. “Jesus Christ, I said. You really are a lunatic”. “And just think, he said. I am the one you came to for help”. “Sweertgirl”...is a wonderful-gritty-heartfelt adventure. It’s impossible to stop reading. It can easily be one or two sittings —-It’s totally satisfying....with a great ending. The terrific writing puts the reader right into the middle of this dangerous odyssey against the winter snow....an affecting story with tenderness, humor, sacrifices, courage, and tons of heart. As my friend Cheri, often gets reminded of songs when reading a book - I did with this one.I’ll share a few lyrics....you’ll know the song.🎶 So, bye-bye Miss American PieDrove my Chevy to the leeve but the leeve was dry And them ‘ol boys were drinkin’ whiskey and ryeSingin’ This’ll be the day that I die This’ll be the day that I die 🎶Thanks to Kasa....whose review inspired me to read this.

The existential ramblings between a meth head named Shelton and some stoned guy driving to his gig as a Roy Orbison impersonator shot this little story up to a four star rating and held it there. The meth head, a brutal dealer who loves his girlfriend, her baby, and his dead dog sucks nitrous oxide repeatedly from little party balloons and leaves their bright carcasses strewn about his Chevy pick-up like confetti after the carnival has left town.Shelton later converses with a colleague about how unfair it is that he would always be judged more harshly than his friend, a man who peddles cocaine: "Well, you know how it is in the media when it comes to meth. They're biased on it." Ha! Despite his musings, Shelton is a murderous dude - a little ditzy from constantly being bombed - but also somehow relatable. My favorite parlor trick for an author to pull is showing me that the bad guy has glints of good here or there. This darkish story is primarily about a 16 year old girl, wise for her years, who goes out seeking the whereabouts of her addict mom but ends up finding a half-frozen, scrawny, neglected baby. The teenaged Percy engages in some fun, smart-assy commentary with her father figure as they try to out-maneuver a Michigan blizzard way out in the sticks and to keep clear of the volatile and dangerous Shelton. Huddled up in a flimsy ice-fishing shanty, their arguments were a total blast to read, despite their precarious situation and that the baby desperately needs medical attention. Tragedy and comedy are dance partners here, the levity relieving pent up darkness.That the vocabulary, wisdom, and thought trains we read would actually come out of the pipes of a 16 year old kid is iffy, but I didn't care. The humor and tension were a fun ride for me. I don't know who the heck this Travis Mulhauser is, but I would LOVE to have him sit at the table for our next dinner party! Smart, witty dialogue - even if somewhat unbelievable for a high school drop out and a handful of inebriates - made this totally enjoyable.I snickered aloud when Percy, muttering as they trudge through the snow - she in cheap boots and thin socks - starts slamming weekend athletes who pay money to compete in mud runs. "You’ve got to have it made to even think like that - to walk around feeling like your life needs a few more challenges thrown in. I wish they had a website for such people. Rich folks with a bunch of crackpot energy. People like me could post help wanted ads, and then the adrenaline junkies could do something of actual value with their foolishness. I mean, why run through some mud you put there on purpose when you could come to Cutler to rescue a baby from the drug- ravaged farmhouse of a fucking lunatic?"Why, indeed, Percy? I've done several of these admittedly ridiculous mud runs myself but will tell you this. Whatever snow or muck this author shovels forth from here on out, sign me up to trudge on through. I'm a fan.

They were tears of grief, but somehow the hurt was clean and not polluted for once with his own shame and guilt.I adored the writing in Sweetgirl, it was gritty, sweet, funny and dreamlike all at the same time. I've tried thinking what I can compare it to, but absolutely nothing comes to mind. I can find no fault with this novel at all, the characters will break your heart. The author has the amazing ability to show that even "bad" people have good intentions and thoughts, and that we should not always judge people by their deeds. In fact Shelton is the character that will probably stay will me the longest. In only 250 pages he creates so many heartfelt characters, he even has the ability to make you feel for people who only features in one scene, for instance Hector and Zeke. The action is fast-paced, and you can never predict what will happen on the next page. The setting also plays a major role in this story, and in becomes a metaphor for love:And that's the thing about Cutler - it's a hard place, but sometimes it's so damn pretty you don't know what to do with it all.If you're looking for something that will make you cry, laugh, hold your breath and feel love, then I highly recommend this beautiful debut novel.

Pure pleasure. Wonderful writing. Started with a bang and never let go. Characters and landscape so full and visceral they left imprints inside me. This was both an escape from reality and a trip into an alternate one that, even though I’ve never lived in Northern Michigan, never fought snowstorms and drug addicts, never did most of what is written about here, it felt familiar. The dialogue is spectacular—both authentic and stylized although you may not notice that. What’s stylized is trapeze-jumping thought transitions, from dealing with down-and-out drugging or weathering impossible elements to inventiveness, that although similar in each character and expressed with a certain formality (“do not” instead of “don’t,” for instance), is unique to each personality. It’s easier just to give you a taste. In this scene the protagonist, a 16-year-old girl named Percy, and Portis, her mother’s ex-boyfriend who is her closest thing to a parent figure, are fleeing drug dealers and trying to save a baby in the midst of a devastating Northern Michigan snowstorm: “How far to the truck?” I [Percy] said.“A mile or so.”“That’s not bad.”“It won’t feel like any mile you’ve ever walked. I can promise you that.”It’s tough walking,” I said. “But it can’t be but so bad.”“We’re going uphill the whole way,” he said.“It doesn’t seem like it.”“It’s a gradual incline.”“That’s good,” I said. “Gradual is good.”“You say potato,” said Portis. (110-111)Read this book to get swept away by a terrific story and fine writing.

Travis Mulhauser's "Sweetgirl" is a beautiful, gritty story in which the characters are just as relentless and powerful as the landscape their story takes place in -- a landscape that turns out to be a central character, in and of itself. Percy is a fascinating and beautiful character whose strength was extraordinary. I was blown away by how deeply I found myself immersed in her and Jenna's story. I could not stop reading -- I had to know what was in the next chapter, on the next page, in the next paragraph. My need to continue was relentless!There is a lot to like about the author's writing here; it has a simplicity to it that feels genuine to the more uneducated characters. But it also had this sort of poetic element to it that hit me right down in my core.I received this book for free through Goodreads Giveaways.Only 5 books into 2016 and I already have my first 5-star rating -- here's to many more this year :)