Before the Devil Knows You’re Here
by Autumn Krause
High School    Peachtree Teen    227 pp.
10/23    9781682636473    $18.99
e-book ed.  9781682636480    $11.99

When Catalina’s pa dies after drinking cider made from a poisoned apple, “wind burst through the cabin like a ferocious intruder…a man, but his skin rose and fell in patchy, lopsided ridges. Bark? Green leaves with serrated edges sprouted from his hair. Birds circled his head.” It’s Johnny Appleseed—he goes by “John, actually”—and this Faustian take on the folk hero posits that he was compelled to plant poisoned apple seeds across North America after selling his soul to the devil. John has come for Catalina’s younger brother, Jose Luis, and she sets off to save him by tracking one of John’s birds. Soon she finds a companion in a young lumberjack, Paul, who is also hunting John. They gradually open up to each other and acknowledge their growing mutual attraction as they face more harrowing forest obstacles. Interspersed with third-person narration are first-person accounts from John detailing his desperate dealings with the maleficent “banker.” Krause’s North American frontier is diverse and filled with historically rooted fantastical elements (e.g., “tree weepers”: sobbing canopy-dwellers dressed in worn period gowns). Her lyrical prose shines in descriptions of nature: “Late summer rains had fattened the wilderness, making it full and dense, as though it wore a coat it had made for itself.” Catalina’s emotional growth, including reflections on her maternal Mexican heritage (her mother died years earlier) and identity as a poet, and several surprising plot twists carry this riveting tale to a satisfying conclusion.

From the November/December 2023 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.