Compound Fracture is a book with a lot to tackle. A lot of ideas on its plate, if you will. It’s a thriller about an autistic trans boy standing up to political corruption. It’s about West Virginian history and the strength of working-class communities. It’s about cycles of violence, and Trump’s first term, and the cruel shape that power can take in modern America.

Photo: Cynthia K. Ritter.

It is also a book about my family. And receiving this Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor is so meaningful because, in a way, this is an honor for the family that helped create it.

There’s something truly magical about writing a book that brings your loved ones closer together. Of course, some parts were tough: there are several conversations on the page that were taken, word-for-word, from talks we had during the difficult early months of my transition. But for the rest? While drafting, I was showered with family stories, old photographs, and links to webpages detailing an obscure miner’s strike that took place just a few miles from my mamaw’s childhood backyard. During audiobook production, I called home and recorded pronunciations to make sure the narrator’s accent was as accurate as possible: creek, oil, wash said like crick, ohl, warsh. I even brought my wife to the place that inspired it all, and we stood together at the north fork of the Blackwater River.

[Read Horn Book reviews of the 2025 BGHB Fiction winners.]

And it’s been amazing to see how much this struck a chord. How many people have recognized the love we put into this. My dad told me that Mamaw got emotional — seeing her late husband memorialized as the protagonist’s papaw, hearing her accent in the audiobook. Some readers sent emails, explaining that Compound Fracture changed their perspective on Appalachia and the American South. Others told me that, as queer kids in the mountains, they finally had a book they felt saw and respected them. I started writing this novel to share the truth of West Virginia’s radical left-wing history, and Appalachia’s legacy as a rebellious heart of labor rights and union activism and — if these folks are to be believed — ended up creating something bigger.

So it is an absolute joy that Compound Fracture was chosen as a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor Book. Thank you to the judges and everyone involved for making this possible; thank you to my publisher, Peachtree Teen, for taking on a story like mine; and to my family, who molded this book, and me, with their bare

hands. And to all the winners and honorees, congratulations. May we have a full lifetime of radical, loving, and meaningful art ahead of us.

From the January/February 2026 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. For more on the 2025 Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards, click on the tag BGHB25.