Heartbreaker

"Where will this road end?  In a crater, an inferno, a rush of water?  I have spent my entire life inside a ten-mile radius.  There is something to be said about a place you can memorize."

The year is 1985 and 15-year-old Pony Darlene Fontaine's mother has disappeared.  She has left the territory just as she appeared...suddenly and without a word.  Left behind the 88 bungalows, the women with their tracksuits, and the men with their matte black trucks.  Pony hasn't given up hope though.  She is determined to find her mother and help her with the mental break she has slowly been having.  Or maybe she's been having it the entire 15 years that she has lived in the territory?  Neither Pony or her father know the entire story behind Billie Jean Fontaine.  Only the family dog has the privilege of knowing all of the secrets.  But even she doesn't know what's happened to Billie Jean.

Heartbreaker, by Claudia Dey, was a fantastic book.  The story of a mother/wife as seen through the eyes of her 15-year-old daughter, her dog, and Supernatural, a teenage boy.  It's also the story of a community that has been cut off from the rest of the world and the extremely odd things that go on there.  At it's core, I'm tempted to call this a love story.  But definitely not in the traditional sense.  More so in that it shows how people are capable of love and how it affects them.

"I would like a panic button.  I would like to be looking at a mirage.  I would like this conversation to be more with God and less with myself.  I would like to see Billie again.  Even if it is just one more time."  

I found the writing style of Claudia Dey to be just perfect.  It was unique and really set the tone of the book.  The book is split into three sections, each with a different narrator (Pony, the dog, Supernatural) and Dey does a wonderful job giving an individual voice to each character.  I loved the concept of the three narrators telling the same story.  It gives the reader three different perspectives on Billie Jean, her husband, The Heavy, and the territory.  

While I enjoyed all of the characters I think my favorite was Supernatural.  A boy so extremely out of place and unsure.  A boy who wants to be kind and quiet in a territory that isn't.  And being the huge dog lover that I am also really appreciated the section narrated by her.  Our dogs are our loyal companions.  They know more about us than anyone else.  Our emotions affect them deeply.  Dey did a very nice job portraying that.