Our final May Weekend Picks comes to us from University of Missouri professor Renee Stites Kruep. She has the perfect recommendation to keep our spring TBR lists well-stocked!
 Renee Stites Kruep | Renee Stites Kruep is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Learning, Teaching, and Curriculum at the University of Missouri. She is co-advisor of Overbooked: An Educators’ Book Club at Mizzou, a vibrant hybrid community where she gets to revisit her time in the middle school classroom through reading and celebrating YA literature with pre-service and alumni teachers. Her academic interests include sustaining teachers through high-quality professional learning, integrated literacy instruction, and inclusive young adult literature that inspires adolescent readers. Her work has appeared in The ALAN Review and Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. |
A Fortune of Sand by Ruta Sepetys
Over the past month, you’ve read four Weekend Picks entries from my current and former English Education students at the University of Missouri. They each highlighted books by authors that they will read, no matter what. Whether it’s nostalgia for a series from their early days as young adult readers or an author who consistently delivers a plot you can’t put down, these are authors my students––all high school teachers––know to recommend to their own students.
We all have these authors, and Ruta Sepetys is one of mine. About a month ago, I was with two friends browsing the shelves of The Garden District Bookshop in New Orleans. They were considering titles on a New Orleans-themed shelf, and I couldn’t believe her book, Out of the Easy, wasn’t on it. I walked them over to the YA shelves and said, “This is SO good. It’s a great New Orleans historical fiction. You’ll love it! It’s YA, but I really feel like this one is written for adult readers. It’s a crossover!”
They took both copies and said, “Why would we care that it’s YA?” (And this is why we’re friends.) We shouldn’t care that it’s YA. The crossover novel, like Out of the Easy, matters because it bridges a gap we often overlook: not just helping students become readers, but helping them stay readers as they grow. Ruta Sepetys is an author who we often associate with incredible Young Adult historical fiction, but she’s writing for adult readers, too. She’s an ideal author to introduce to our students—much like Collins, Boulley, and Shusterman—becuase we know our students can grow and keep reading with her over time.
 | A Fortune of Sand was just released on Tuesday, and it reminds me so much of Out of the Easy. It’s a true crossover novel marketed to a more adult audience. It takes place in 1927 Detroit and centers on the Lennox family, a dysfunctional and corrupt family who made their fortune in glass manufacturing for cars. Marjorie is the youngest daughter of four siblings, and she doesn’t quite fit in as the free spirit. She gets a chance to participate in an artist residency with the ambition to design a fashion line. But once she arrives, things feel off. The other women, respectable artists in their own right, have interesting but troubling backstories. They begin to wonder if the building is haunted. Their patron remains an enigmatic figure with rumors linking him to possible criminal activity. And there are just so many unusual rules they must follow. Majorie starts to put the pieces together and realizes her family’s secrets while starting to keep a few of her own. Sepetys, once again, crafts a novel that puts you right into the era. It’s the Roaring Twenties with illegal alcohol, elegant parties, mystery, and glamour. |
| Ruta builds a cast of characters that keeps you rooting for some and uneasy about others. But what I always appreciate about her work is that she layers in the quiet stories of history. Every Sepetys novel leaves me eager to read her author’s note, dig into deeper histories, and think about the local stories worth uncovering in my own community. In A Fortune of Sand, Sepetys captures the grandeur of the Motor City and its patriarchs. She weaves in the corruption and crime surrounding media and high society, and she whispers the unsettling reality of women’s mental health care in the 1920s. Readers move quickly through the plot propelled by her engaging characters, but they’re left thinking about the historical details embedded throughout. We love books and the power of a good story. We hope that our students will, too. And that means we have to keep finding what’s next for them. Ruta Sepetys is walking that path with us—hooking readers early and giving them a reason to keep reading long after they’ve left our classrooms. She’s the kind of author we and our students need in the crossover. |  Ruta Sepetys |
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