Review by Karen Weyant

Marilou is Everywhere
Sarah Elaine Smith

Penguin Random House, 2019

Cindy Stoat lives in a rural Pennsylvania home with her two brothers and a mother who is often absent for weeks at a time. Lonely and awkward, Cindy, who is only 14 years old, becomes involved in the disappearance of a local teenage girl named Jude Vanderjohn, and then, through a series of mishaps, she finds herself immersed in Jude’s home and her life.

Fans of fiction may find the author’s meandering plotline a bit confusing as there is not a clear beginning nor ending to Cindy’s story. Indeed, from the start, Cindy’s story is intertwined with Jude’s story and thus, we accept how seemingly easy it was for Cindy to fill in the hole that Jude’s absence has left.  

In spite of the nonlinear storyline, (or perhaps because of it) Cindy’s story is captivating, mostly because of Smith’s eloquent language that can only be described as poetic. For example, in the beginning of the book, where Cindy delivers a monologue of sorts, we learn that she felt that her “life was an empty place” that she defines with specific images of “rainbows in oil puddles” and “bug bites hatched with a curved x from my fingernails.” 

Other details help lead us through Cindy’s journey. For instance, when Cindy is riding the back of her brother’s truck, she describes sitting next to the cab, and her “tailbone buzzing” with the start of the rumbling vehicle. When she bathes in a local pond, she describes throwing rocks so each throw, “would send a tail of white water gutting up from the surface so the snakes could get scared off.” 

Too often, the stories of those who live in rural poverty are stripped down to bare-bone stereotypes that fail to truly explore their lives or even offer interesting personalities to the readers. Smith avoids this trap and instead gives us a poignant picture of a world that many people fail to explore or even acknowledge. In spite of the characters’ flaws, we find ourselves rooting for their survival at the end.