Green Angel

Green Angel by Hoffman, Alice. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780439443845.

Left on her own when her family is lost in a terrible disaster, fifteen-year-old Green is haunted by loss and by the past. Struggling to survive physically and emotionally in a place where nothing seems to grow, Green retreats into the ruined realm of her garden. Every encounter with people, even the ones she used to know, pushes her further into the woods, into her house, and into herself. But in destroying her feelings, she also begins to destroy herself, erasing the girl shed once been as she inks ravens and bats into her skin. It is only through a series of encounters with a ghostly white dog and a mute boy that Green relearns the lessons of love and begins to heal as she tells her story. With her trademark lyrical and magical prose, Alice Hoffman creates a world reminiscent of our own, in which a young girl must build and then shed the armor she makes to protect herself.