Bone Gap: A Blinded Town Anonymous 9th Grade

People often say, “when writing the story of your life, don’t let anyone else hold the pen,” but inevitably, when people see others, they form their own judgements and push those assumptions onto them: writing their stories for them and forcing people into boxes they don’t fit into. Laura Ruby explores this idea in Bone Gap with Roza, a beautiful woman who mysteriously appears in the O’Sullivan household in Bone Gap after being kidnapped by the Scare Crow. She originally lives in Poland, where she is abused by a number of men in her hometown. In Bone Gap, she begins to fall in love with Sean and develop a platonic relationship with Finn while taking care of the house, gardening, and cooking. The townspeople gossip, thinking that Roza yearns for romantic love and that she must be in love with both brothers. Petey, comparatively, is less conventionally attractive, and the townspeople draw conclusions from that. They constantly chatter about Petey’s appearance and her crankiness, wondering where it stems from while calling her homely. Eventually, they paint her as a girl who has an ugly face but a nice body and will do anything, desperate for attention, even as her relationship with Finn develops. Both of these women are more...