33 Snowfish is a novel by Adam Rapp that has come under enormous scrutiny by proponents of the surging movement to ban books. The novel is about kids and teens and targeted toward a readership of teenagers. While a rough ride, it is certainly no more offensive or harmful than the average made-for-streaming TV series featuring stories about teens targeted to a viewership of teens.
The story is not a fun ride through a rose-colored view of what makes America great. Custis is a ten-year-old boy who has been living in a state of “ownership” by a pedophile who may be planning to make him the victim in a snuff film. He eventually becomes part of a strange threesome that includes a pyromaniacal older teenage boy named Boobie and Boobie’s slightly younger drug-addicted girlfriend Curl. After Boobie murders his parents, his baby brother makes it a fugitive foursome who take to the road in a stolen car and do whatever is necessary to avoid the police and survive on their wits. Inevitably the tensions within this makeshift family become too much to bear and one of the characters dies while another vanishes in the snow. Custis winds up in the home of another older male but this time the situation carries the promise of hope for a future and better life rather than exploitation and an early death.
Ultimately, 33 Snowfish is a tale of families operating in various states of dysfunction and origin. The family into which Custis was born was so weak and damaged that it led to the circumstances in which he became the property of substitute “father” who regularly abused him in every possible. The makeshift family comprised of teenage friends and an abducted orphan infant provide Custis with the care and sympathy and emotional support he has never known before but his friends cannot provide any other necessary support. Finally, Custis and the baby are “adopted” by a kindly old man who saves both the children from a fate that is unknown but unquestionably dark.
One may be tempted to ask where is the presence of those adults and services whose job is protect children forced to live in such conditions. The answer is the point. Social services are nowhere to be found and the police only want to ignore or punish the kids. As for the adults making up their families, things are either exactly the same or even worse. The name of the old man living in a cabin in the woods says it all. His name is Seldom that describes how often adults come to the aid of these kids that have been betrayed by the system.
