Orpheus Girl

Raya grows up with her grandmother in a conservative Texas town, finding refuge in ancient mythology and in her feelings for Sarah, her best friend. When their relationship is exposed, both girls are sent to a conversion-therapy camp. Raya draws on the story of Orpheus to understand the ordeal and to imagine a way of reaching Sarah through it. The familiar myth becomes a framework for a very immediate struggle against adults intent on denying who they are. Brynne Rebele-Henry’s YA novel centers two teenage girls whose love is threatened by coercion, following the tension between the stories Raya knows and the choices survival demands of her.