Like Mandarin

Fourteen-year-old Grace Carpenter feels trapped, living in the Badlands of Wyoming with her angelic half-sister and her social-climbing mother. Skipping ahead a grade in school and rejecting the beauty-pageant queen mold her mother encourages, Grace leads a fairly isolated and dull life, punctuated by an obsession with the capricious and edgy Mandarin Ramey, who represents both the adventure and self-assuredness that Grace lacks ("It was like she took pleasure in being a misfit. While I felt exactly the opposite," says Grace). When she's assigned to tutor Mandarin, an awkward friendship blooms. But when Mandarin's dark past rises to the surface, Grace must decide how far she will go to emulate her friend. Hubbard's first novel is replete with lovely imagery, with the Wyoming landscape being perhaps the most nuanced of her characters ("I'd wandered through the Washokey Bandlands Basin so many times I'd memorized the feeling. The forlorn boom of wind. A sky big enough to scare an atheist into prayer"). Grace's struggle to reconcile her past and present selves, along with her recognition of Mandarin's fragility, drives this lyrical coming-of-age story. Ages 14%E2%80%93up. (Mar.)