A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest
By Charlie J. Stephens. This exquisite coming-of-age story depicts a queer youth struggling to survive in the rural Oregon of the 1980s. In the human world, the narrator's life is defined by poverty, instability, and abuse from their mother's boyfriends. But to Smokey, a nonbinary child with a shamanic connection to animals, the human world is not the only or most important one. The adults are tossed around by delusion and impulse, even Smokey's mother, who is genuinely devoted but succumbs to her addiction to dangerous men. The child's view of reality is clear, compassionate, and attuned to beauty. This makes the book hopeful in a strange way, despite the tragedies that pile up.
Source: https://www.torreyhouse.org/a-wounded-deer-leaps-highest
