A Good Animal (publication day 2/24/26) is Sara Maurer’s debut novel, and is set in the mid-1990s in the farmland around Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. It is told from the perspective of Everett Lindt, a 17-year old boy who raises show lambs with his family-his mom works at a bank, his dad at the highway department, and he has a 12-year old brother and 7-year old sister. But the sheep are their family’s way of life.
The summer before his senior year, while he’s haying with his best friend and golden boy Charlie, he meets Mary, who has just moved there with her Coast Guard father and has no intention of staying after graduation. Everett can’t imagine being anywhere else or doing anything but farming and raising sheep. Nevertheless, they fall for each other during their senior year.
Everett has a good heart and is proud to be a hard worker, but through the year he makes some decisions that will haunt him later, both because of his youth and because he wants to forge a little of his own path within his idea of what he wants for himself. And his solution to the problem he and Mary have gotten into is truly-wow.
I loved the way Maurer describes the area–the St. Mary’s River and the landscape–and it just added to my desire to visit after reading Angeline Boulley’s books (Firekeeper’s Daughter, Warrior Girl Unearthed, and Sisters in the Wind). Though A Good Animal is very different from Boulley’s work, I recognized the place.
A Good Animal is mostly weight-neutral. Although there is some description of characters’ bodies, it’s mostly done in a neutral way. I enjoyed it, especially since I don’t often read books set from a male perspective. I liked Everett, flawed as he was, and thought this was a well-written coming of age story.
Reading While Fat 