APPLE IN THE MIDDLE, by Dawn Quigley--Review by Alexis, Age 18

*Warning: There are spoilers because I discuss the book, but I don’t give away important plot points. There is also use of the n-word.

I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but I was really drawn to the image on Dawn Quigley’s APPLE IN THE MIDDLE (AITM) before the book was even published (August 2018). The image of a contemporary Native teen, who is not ridiculously glamorous, but pretty and real (love those earrings!), got stuck in my mind immediately. I thought, ‘I want to know who this girl is,’ and why there’s a pink house in the background.

I am happy to say that the book more than lived up to my expectations. It’s not just a well-written, enjoyable book I admired from a distance. In some ways, I feel I am that girl on the cover, fifteen-year old Apple Starkington. Even though the circumstances of our lives are very different.

Like Apple, I have a White father and a Native mother. My mom is Florida Seminole, while Apple’s mother was Turtle Mountain Chippewa. I was raised by my mom and her family in a working-class to middle-class environment. Apple’s mom died soon after she was born. She was raised by her White, upper middle-class father and his wife.  She lives in a seven bedroom house, but her parents don’t send her to private school. Even though she is rich and stylish, she is an outsider.

There are certain incidents from her school that are so recognizable to me. She fills in weird details, like a teacher who likes to sniff white board markers! She insists on playing Squanto in a play, which is sick. And there are tragic episodes that come from Apple “always [feeling] like I’m living and bouncing between two worlds: the white and the Native American, with nowhere to comfortably land. Being different, I ricochet back and forth everywhere else, too, from family life, friendships, school and my appearance.”

When she was seven years old, she was happy being outside, riding the slide at recess. Until a White boy called her “prairie nigger.” Apple: “That day the boy took something away from me. He took away the hidden half that my mother gave to me, the Indian side, and replaced it with shame.”

I do not live among prairies in Minnesota. But I have had obscene comments made to me about my female ancestors' behavior during the Seminole Wars and to the present day. Native girls are slurred by misogyny and racism. White boys attack Native girls with darker skin, like me and Apple, with slurs that they’ve historically used against African American women. Apple says, “I’m the Oreo crumb floating in a glass of milk.”

Even though my library has AITM, I read the ARC that Ms. Edi Campbell (@CrazyQuilts) sent to @OfGlades. I liked reading the copy she read. I noticed which corners she folded down. She wrote an excellent review.

Another thing I share with Apple is the ability to be able to intuit something secret about a person when I encounter them. A teacher once told me that a man named Jung named that power. But Native people have had those powers for centuries before Jung. Apple also has repetitive, meaningful dreams.

One weird thing Apple does is pretend to be a foreign exchange student, to explain her differences to her classmates. She speaks in a fake Australian accent.

Her father and stepmother decide she will spend the summer with her mother’s family on the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Indian Reservation in North Dakota.

This is not a ‘rez blues’ book. Do you know what that is? It’s a book that shows how miserable life is on Native reservations. These books are very popular with White audiences. They fall into Indian stereotypes about broken families, domestic abuse, child neglect, molestation and, of course, alcoholism. Some citizens of Native Nations who live on reservations have these terrible conditions in their lives. I would never mock them or say that writers shouldn’t express them. But people who live off reservations, including many White people, also have these issues and are not defined by them as a people. (Apple’s White father is a recovering alcoholic.)

This book shows that what may appear as poor living conditions or being deprived to an entitled outside observer is actually quite enough and beautiful to people who live there. Take that house, or double wide trailer—that Apple first finds disgusting and embarrassing in its ‘Pepto Bismol color.’ Her view keeps changing, until she sees it as a more appealing 'salmon' color.

It is fun to watch Apple’s perceptions change. She is judgmental and spoiled. She expects to see eagles and hear flute music on the reservation. But she is not punished for being a rich, stylish girl from a gated White community. This is not at all an anti-girl book.

The author is very good at explaining the nuances of Native identity.  We learn that the last thing Apple’s mother said was, “Ma fille, le pomme de mes yeauxs,” and so she’s named Apple. Quigley explains here that people from her mother’s reservation are descended from Chippewa citizens and French fur traders. “The mixed band of Natives were called Metis, the French word for mixed, but the tribe also calls itself Michif.” There are other complexities explained. Such as when Apple’s grandfather is cooking for her and explains how Michif can describe people or a language. And grandma says: "Eya, yes, some say Chippewa, some Ojibwe and some even say Anishinaabe, but it's basically all about tribal origin."

Readers learn that Apple is also a Native slur—red on the outside, white on the inside.

Apple’s family on the reservation is incredibly likable, including ‘a man as a big as a mountain’ called Junior. At first, I thought he was too stereotypical—the fat, good-natured Indian. But he is a three-dimensional character, and he reminds me of guys I know.

I love the character of Little Nezzie. I won’t ever forget her. Ms. Edi writes, “She was such an elusive little girl! In any other story, she would have been completely invisible. But, here surrounded on this Reservation, in this world and this family that values children, she becomes an important addition to Apple’s story.”

Apple meets Nezzie right away when she arrives at the pink house. “She looks to be around five years old with an avalanche of chestnut curls spilling down her back.” Nezzie introduces Apple to the accent or speech pattern used in their community and so much else.

Apple asks about Nezzie’s mom, Big Inez. Grandfather replies, “Little Inez’s mom had some problem with drugs. Ran off with some guy she met at da casino. Every now and den Little Inez gets an envelope in da mail with a few dollars in it.”

Apple’s heart goes out to the girl who is motherless in a different way from her. Apple doesn’t become a mother figure for Nezzie. The people on Turtle Mountain haven’t given up on Big Inez. “Best friend,” Nezzie says, “drifting off to sleep in the truck seat next to me.”

This is one of my favorite passages in the whole book. Apple: “That’s all she says. Two words. And they mean the world to me. I’ve never had a best friend before. I’ve never had someone who loved me no matter what stupid things I said. I’ve never had someone who could look past my exterior and into my heart. But I have one now.”

Remember how I said it’s not an anti-girl book? I read a lot of YA by authors who call themselves feminists, but they don’t even understand kinship between girls/women/femmes. This book does it naturally.

There are so many good things in the book. The preparations for the powwow, especially the outfits (not “costumes”) that are unique to each dancer. I can just picture Nezzie’s flowered shawl. Apple has a WHOOSH moment: “Like I was every sound and every sight here at the powwow.” All of the humor. From the moment that Apple pulls up at the pink house. She is expecting a great, warm welcome. But her Turtle Mountain family stay seated on the deck and someone says, “Your front tires are low.” That’s SO Native! And lolz about Apple believing she discovered ancient burial mounds which are really “da crapper keeper.” And bringing Nicorette gum as an offering to an Auntie who reads dreams. Family and humor, that’s what it’s all about.

There is the mystery of who is throwing objects through the window of Apple’s mother’s old bedroom, where she is staying. And a really nasty dude called Karl, who seems to hate Apple because she’s half-White and he was in love with her mother many years ago. And the graveyard where Apple’s mom lays buried. A box of mixed tapes. Hate graffiti on the reservation sign. I won’t give more information about those plot twists. Get ready to have your heart broken.

When Apple goes back to her father’s house, she decides, “all things worthwhile are found in the middle. Which is why I’ve decided it’s the only place for me—Apple in the Middle—to be.”

She gets a date with a cute boy and writes a killer “What did you do over the summer?” back to school essay. Quigley knows kids and teens cling to books like a life raft sometimes. She writes, “You who feel lost, abandoned, steeped in solitude, remember: none of us is truly alone."

There were a few minor issues. The author uses Tourette syndrome incorrectly and I don’t know why Apple’s stepmother must have difficulty with the sibilant s. Apple asks, “Is Little Inez…you know…a ‘special needs’ child? Because, well, she seems to have a violent streak.” I'm not an expert. I am still learning about disability and making mistakes too.

I recommend this book highly to any reader! I think it should be read widely and assigned in schools and appear on state reading lists. I am recommending it for SSYRA. Thank you, Dawn Quigley, for creating this world and these characters based on your own experiences. You made me honor the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. You made me laugh and cry. Please write another book soon!

*Thanks to my mother Gail and my librarian and writer friend Ann for taking time out of their very busy schedules to read and edit this review (twice) and offer good suggestions. This review is mine, and may not exactly reflect the ideas and opinions of all members of Indigo's Bookshelf.

** Feedback is welcome on anything I still got wrong!