Rarity from the Hollow

In this digital reissue of Eggleton’s uneven 2012 debut, Lacy Dawn lives in a small, failing coal town somewhere in the early 21st-century U.S. where poverty and abuse are the norm. The story opens on Lacy Dawn in fifth grade and emphasizes her harsh home life. Things take a science-fictional turn when the focus shifts to Lacy Dawn’s relationship with DotCom, her robot friend of alien origins. DotCom “upgrades” Lacy Dawn and her parents by transmitting information into their brains via ports in their spines, and it gives her father treatment to overcome his Desert Storm PTSD, after which he stops abusing Lacy Dawn and her mother. The final third of the book sees a now-13-year-old Lacy Dawn and her family entering into an intergalactic shopping game at an alien mall. Eggleton’s stylistic choices make the book feel a little like a prose poem and occasionally make it hard to tell who is speaking or thinking. The abuse in the book is graphic, but the story arc is hopeful: a family recovering and becoming better together. (Aug.)