"Pure"

Critically acclaimed, bestselling author Julianna Baggott also writes under the pen names Bridget Asher and N.E. Bode. She has published seventeen books over the last ten years.

After receiving her M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Baggott published her first novel, Girl Talk, which was a national bestseller and was quickly followed by Boston Globe bestseller The Miss America Family, and then Boston Herald Book Club selection, The Madam, an historical novel based on the life of her grandmother. She co-wrote Which Brings Me to You with Steve Almond, a Kirkus Best Book of 2006.

Baggott applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Pure, and reported the following:

If you read this page only, you won't really get a feel for the beaten ash-choked world of the book. Yes, there will be a cicada fluttering metal wings. You'll know there's a threat. "When survivors approach sixteen, alliances break down. Everyone knows that they have to fend for themselves." You'll know that Gorse and Fandra are two kids who've disappeared. Otherwise it's Pressia's sixteenth birthday and her grandfather shows her a gift that's shown up from someone named Bradwell -- someone her father stitched up. He has two scars running up one cheek. The gift makes Pressia furious.

All in all, there are worse places to enter the book. The world building looms and the reader will get to it soon enough from there.

Learn more about the book and author at Julianna Baggott's website and blog.

--Marshal Zeringue