Portland Public Library

Dig, by A.S. King

eng

no index present

fiction

Dig

1037883891

by A.S. King

"You'll find a lot underground if you keep digging." The Shoveler, The Freak, CanIHelpYou?, Loretta the Flea Circus Ring Mistress, and First Class Malcolm. These are the five teenagers lost in the Hemmings family's maze of tangled secrets. Only a generation removed from being Pennsylvania potato farmers, Gottfried and Marla Hemmings managed to trade digging spuds for developing subdivisions and now sit atop of million-dollar bank account - wealth they've declined to pass on to their adult children or their teenage grandchildren. "Because we want them to thrive," Marla always says. What does thriving look like? Like carrying a snow shovel everywhere. Like selling weed at the Arby's Drive-Thru window. Like first-class tickets to Jamaica between cancer treatments. Like a flea circus in a trailer park. Like the GPS coordinates to a mound of dirt in a New Jersey forest. As the rot just beneath the surface of the Hemmings' suburban respectability begins to spread, the estranged grandchildren gradually find their ways back to one another, just in time to uncover the terrible cost of maintaining the family name. With her inimitable surrealism, A.S. King explores how a toxic culture of polite, affluent white supremacy tears a family apart and how one determined generation has a shot at digging its way out. --, From dust jacket

adolescent