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Strings Attached

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Strings Attached

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Overview

From National Book Award winner Judy Blundell, the tale of a sixteen-year-old girl caught in a mix of love, mystery, Broadway glamour, and Mob retribution in 1950 New York.When Kit Corrigan arrives in New York City, she doesn't have much. She's fled from her family in Providence, Rhode Island, and she's broken off her tempestuous relationship with a boy named Billy, who's enlisted in the army. The city doesn't exactly welcome her with open arms. She gets a bit part as a chorus girl in a Broadway show, but she knows that's not going to last very long. She needs help--and then it comes, from an unexpected source.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780545388443
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	04/01/2011
Sold by:	Scholastic, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	1,057,518
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

Judy Blundell's WHAT I SAW AND HOW I LIED is the 2008 winner of the National Book Award for Young People's Literature. As Jude Watson, she is the author of several titles in the New York Times bestselling 39 Clues series as well as the bestselling Star Wars: Last of the Jedi and Jedi Quest series. She lives in Katonah, New York.

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Editorial Reviews

Part of what makes the teenage years so fascinating, and so full of trepidation, for both teenagers and the adults involved in their lives, is that ethical codes are still in in their larval form and, very much in flux. As she did in her National Book Award-winning What I Saw and How I Lied (2008), in Strings Attached Judy Blundell offers another noirish thriller in which teenagers uncover the questionable actions of their elders and learn to form their own judgments.
—The New York Times

Darcey Steinke

Judy Blundell follows her 2008 National Book Award winner, What I Saw and How I Lied, with an intense young-adult mystery cut from the same midcentury-noir cloth but, if possible, even more intricately stitched. Family secrets are the warp and weft of this novel, too.
—The Washington Post

Mary Quattlebaum

The New York City mobster scene during the 1950s is vibrantly brought to life in this saga of a poor dancer who pays a high price for the breaks she gets. When the story opens, 17-year-old Kit Corrigan has left her Providence, R.I., family for the lights of Broadway and still has mixed feelings about her hotheaded ex-boyfriend, Billy, who has since joined the army. Then Kit receives an offer she can't refuse: become a snoop for Billy's gangster father in exchange for a much-needed Manhattan apartment and a nightclub gig. Kit almost immediately regrets her decision but is unable to prevent a future tainted by heartache, deception, and murder. Past tragedies suffered by Kit and her Irish-American family are artfully woven into the plot; if the book is a little slow-moving at first, National Book Award–winner Blundell (What I Saw and How I Lied) successfully constructs a complex web of intrigue that connects characters in unexpected ways. History and theater buffs will especially appreciate her attention to detail—Blundell again demonstrates she can turn out first-rate historical fiction. Ages 13–up. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Strings Attached:* "National Book Award–winner Blundell delivers a brilliantly conceived novel set against the backdrop of the 1950 Kefauver mob hearings and the Red Scare with a story of redemption and truth at its core." - Kirkus Reviews, starred review* "National Book Award–winner Blundell successfully constructs a complex web of intrigue" - Publishers Weekly, starred review"Blundell is a master of the literary slow build, and her emotive yet sober style is reminiscent of F. Scott Fitzgerald's in The Great Gatsby." - LA Times"Evoking the glamour, grit, and gusto of the era, Blundell has produced a compelling narrative with well-crafted characters who bring different ambitions, fears, and memories toward tragic collisions." - School Library Journal

From the Publisher

Redheaded Kit Corrigan is a dancer with a dream who has fled her Providence, Rhode Island, family and her volatile sweetheart, Billy, to head for Broadway lights. Emma Galvin expertly depicts the exciting world of the theater in 1950s New York. The glamour of uptown nightclubs, the mystique of Greenwich Village, and the postwar optimism of young chorus girls play out against a background of the Korean War, Red scares, and nuclear foreboding. When Billy’s father, who works for the Mafia, offers her a deal that could help Kit survive in the city, the plot takes a suspenseful turn. Galvin negotiates flashbacks and period details without ever losing the story’s tension. At the end, Judy Blundell takes a curtain call to answer listeners’ questions with warmth and charm. M.C.T. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2011 - AudioFile

Caught up in dreams of dancing on Broadway, Kit Corrigan unwisely accepts an apartment and a nightclub job from mob lawyer Nate Benedict in exchange for keeping tabs on his son Billy, who's enlisted in the Army along with Kit's brother, Jamie. Kit broke off her relationship with Billy after his last jealousy-fueled outburst. Nate starts calling in favors, and Kit becomes entangled in a web of secrets and lies. Like her Aunt Delia before her, she came to New York to escape a suffocating life in Providence and what Jamie calls "the Irish form of advancement—you don't dare do better than those before you." Kit's father had scraped together a living off the novelty of his motherless triplets, the Corrigan Three, in a home with psychic and emotional "undertows, things we didn't understand, and jokes and stories passing for truth." Layers of deception are peeled away in a jumbled sequence of events that echoes Kit's confusion as she discovers the extent of her family's connection with the Benedicts and realizes that her own actions at the age of 12 set in motion a chain of events that end in murder. National Book Award–winner Blundell (What I Saw and How I Lied, 2008)delivers a brilliantly conceived novel set against the backdrop of the 1950 Kefauver mob hearings and the Red Scare with a story of redemption and truth at its core.(Historical fiction. 14 & up)

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