Chattanooga author Natalie Lloyd’s latest tale of heartbreak and hope for middle school readers is The Witching Wind. Roxie Darling and Grayson Patch become friends as incoming sixth graders at Camelot Middle School in fictional Silas County, Tennessee. And, as is always the case in a Natalie Lloyd book, fantastical adventures are soon afoot.
The school year gets off to a difficult start for Roxie, who is embarrassed and bullied at the class pool party when other students make jokes about her weight. “I don’t think people always realize how loud whispers can be,” Roxie says. “How your heart’s hearing is even better than your ears.” But unlike Grayson, Roxie has lived in the area her whole life and has deep roots and lots of family around her — especially her beloved grandmother, Ruthie Diamond Darling, a celebrated folk singer back in the day, who promises to take Roxie on the road with her. Roxie is a musician and songwriter, too, and can’t wait to escape “the Terrible Abyss of Doom and Darkness (aka school)” and join her Granny on tour.
Grayson, who has just been placed with a new foster family, desperately misses her big sister Beanie, whom she is counting on to come for her when Beanie turns 18 in a few days. Grayson has a hard time making friends; her rough voice and stern demeanor tend to get in the way. (“I’m basically the human version of Oscar the Grouch,” she says.) Grayson also has brittle bones and uses a walker. But unlike Roxie, she refuses to let others make her feel anxious or ashamed. And she owes a lot of that to her sister: “Beanie said she should be proud of her body. That she should advocate for it. Beanie taught Grayson that there’s no room — no space — where Grayson Patch does not belong.” Even though her new family seems kind, Grayson is ready to drop everything and go with Beanie at a moment’s notice.
Required to join a school club, the two girls end up in the Welcome Wagon, or “the dork club for leftovers,” as Roxie describes it. And much to their surprise, they not only bond with each other, but with the other four misfit members of what they christen “Club Yehaw.” That’s where they learn more about the legend of the Witching Wind, a violent blast of air that sends their community into an uproar every time it blows through. It’s rumored to make things — and even people — disappear. Some claim to hear voices in the wind, the voices of those who have been snatched. Many blame the True sisters, two mountain women believed to be witches, for the wind’s mysterious appearance and frightening behavior.
As Beanie’s expected arrival time comes and goes, Grayson quietly suffers the grief of her sister not showing up for her, or even answering her texts. Meanwhile, Roxie’s grandmother goes missing, and when she hears Granny’s voice blow by her ear, Roxie is sure that the Witching Wind has taken her. As the members of Club Yehaw work together to get to the bottom of the mysteries swirling around them, friendships are strengthened, hearts are tested, and surprising discoveries are made.
Reading a Natalie Lloyd book just makes you feel better about the world. She excels at creating magical scenarios filled with seemingly unlimited possibilities where brave children must stand up to bullying, cope with tragedy, and deal with physical and emotional struggles. It’s fantasy grounded in painful reality. As a person who, like Grayson, suffers from brittle bones, Lloyd knows whereof she speaks, and it shows. Although her novels lean heavily on mystery and whimsy to create a sense of adventure, their resolution cuts straight to the heart, through triumphs of understanding and compassion and hope.
“There’s always somebody who will try to silence your story,” Lloyd writes. “But there is also, always, somebody who wants to hear it. Somebody who’ll give you a safe place to sit. And share. And send your words into the world, however you want them said.” The world is a richer place with Natalie Lloyd’s words in it. May the wind take them and fly.
Tina Chambers has worked as a technical editor at an engineering firm and as an editorial assistant at Peachtree Publishers, where she worked on books by Erskine Caldwell, Will Campbell, and Ferrol Sams, to name a few. She lives in Chattanooga.
Tagged: Book Reviews, Children & YA, Fiction
