Synopses & Reviews
"The best way to avoid being picked on by high school bullies is to kill someone."
Karina has plenty to worry about on the last day of seventh grade: finding three Ds and a C on her report card again, getting laughed at by everyone again, being sent to the principal again. She'd like this to change, but with her and her sisters dodging their stepfather's fists every day after school, she doesn't have time to do much self-reflecting. Finally her stepfather is taken away on child abuse charges, and Karina thinks things might turn into something resembling normal. The problem is, he's not gone for good. And as Karina becomes closer with a girl at the community center where her stepfather is not showing up for his parenting classes, she starts to realize a couple things. First, for all the problems her family had tried to escape by immigrating from Haiti, they brought most of them along to upstate New York. And second, if anything is going to change for this family, it is going to be up to Karina and her sisters to make it happen.
M. Sindy Felin's debut novel is the story of a young girl's coming-of-age amid the violent waters that run just beneath the surface of suburbia a story that has the courage to ask: How far will you go to protect the ones you love?
Review
"Although the resolution is brutal, this story is a compelling read from an important and much-needed new voice. Readers will cheer for the young narrator who is determined to step out of the role of victim and build a safe and meaningful life for herself and her family." School Library Journal
Review
"Remarkably nuanced characters give this emotionally challenging read just enough humanity to make it bearable." Horn Book Magazine
Review
"Karina is a funny, whip-smart girl caught in the middle of a nightmare. Only when I laughed out loud did I remember to breathe." Valerie Hobbs, author of Defiance
Review
"M. Sindy Felin is a writer whose words flow like mercury volatile and dangerous. She is a wonderful, mesmerizing new talent." Sharon M. Draper, Coretta Scott King Award-winning author of The Battle of Jericho
Review
"Felin touches those who have kept a family secret when it should have been exposed, and that is far too many readers." VOYA
Review
"This is as good as The Color Purple in its own way and contains some of the same elements that make that novel problematic for YA libraries: terrible, dysfunctional family relationships, brutality, lesbian experiences. And like The Color Purple, Touching Snow gives us amazingly resilient heroines, with an original, authentic voice telling the story of survival." KLIATT
Review
"At times, the first-person narration grates, but the tale never loses momentum." Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
andlt;Bandgt;M. Sindy Felinandlt;/Bandgt; was born in Brooklyn, New York to Hatian immigrants and grew up in suburban Rockland County. She was the first person in her extended family to have been born in the United States, and the first girl to attend college--she graduated from Wesleyan University in 1994. andlt;iandgt;Touching Snowandlt;/iandgt; is her first novel. Sindy lives just outside Washington, D.C