through all of it, evie never wavers, and she does eventually make her escape with her girlfriend. The story is insightful, showing us a range of ignorant public reactions to 'homosexuality' in their very own small town. evie is perfectly lovable in all her butch glory.

meaker's author's note also says she didn't want to make evie femme in order to make her likable, and thank god she didn't. we're in the straight kid's shoes, fostering empathy for a lgbt+ loved one, and hopefully straight readers of the 90s were able to feel empathy for evie too. I think it was clever of meaker to write the book from a sibling's perspective. they love her enough to remain in deep denial about her sexuality, aside from parr, who is particularly understanding. she is funny and defiant and unapologetically herself, and her family adores her. it's told from the perspective of parr, evie's sympathetic younger brother, who watches drama unfold as evie's secret gets out.Įvie is a super butch lesbian farm kid, and her personality is magnetic. as for the book itself, it's a quick, entertaining read.

the context of lgbt+ fiction has shifted so dramatically in these years, and it's fascinating to see the progression.Īnyway. Meaker died only a few months ago, and before she went i hope she was able to see the golden age of sapphic romcoms we're in right now. (sadly, her note mentions a memoir she was working on titled remind me, which seems to have been unfinished and/or unpublished) love that she made her writing dream happen despite the obstacles, and that her pseudonyms gave her the freedom to write about queer characters without consequences. she says she was unable to find an agent, so she became her own agent, writing prolifically under various pseudonyms as clients within different genres.

Meaker's author's note at the end of the book is lovely. i read spring fire not long ago, and i wanted to see how the author's style shifted when she moved from scandalous lesbian pulp of the 1950s to realistic YA fiction of the 1990s. kerr, is none other than lesbian pulp novelist vin packer. While i have a lot of old school gay novels on my list, i wanted to read this one sooner than later because the author marijane meaker, or m.e. it's about a missouri farm family living in an insular and very religious rural small town, so not a particularly progressive community. this 1990s lgbt+ classic actually holds up really nicely, though it often feels like it came from an earlier decade.

Deliver Us from Evie by M.E. Kerr