Hick by Andrea Portes
Fiction Paperback Original
ISBN-10: 1-932961-32-1 / ISBN-13: 978-1-932961-32-4
6 x 9 / 265 Pages / $14.95 / May 2007
Summary | Praise | Excerpt | Widgets | Reading Guide | Bio | Events
Summary
Though its first-person narrating voice is fast-paced, powerful and unquestionably authentic, Hick is a debut novel.
Beyond this voice, what makes the book so extraordinary is that, although all of the worst things imaginable do befall this 13-year-old girl, she is never defeated by them. Luli always fights back; she always resurfaces.
Set as a coming-of-age novel, Hick tracks the real perils that modern teenagers so often face. And it does so with bright wit, energy, and an indomitable spirit.
This is a book that will grab the reader from the first page and not let go.
And it is written by a woman who is becoming a cultural force in the hippest parts of Los Angeles.
Praise
A May 2007 Book Sense Pick!
A Los Angeles Times Bestseller!!!
"Hick is a terrific and addicting read. It just barrels along, fueled by the adrenaline and enthusiasm of its youthful narrator. It has garnered good reviews from the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers. And it has done so despite being published a few weeks ago as a paperback original; if a book does not come out first in hardcover, it can be an impediment." - The Kansas City Star
"Hick is extraordinary—not only because it gives voice to a 13-year-old with exactitude and complete believability, but also because it offers readers some important lessons in how to experience a novel. It makes us react—laugh, cry, get angry—and never breeds indifference. The success it's achieving in sales and notices is, in my opinion, well-deserved." - Peter Quinones, The Bohemian Aesthetic
“Sometimes a book is so good it just vibrates with life. Hick by Andrea Portes is that good. Once you start reading it, you won't want to put it down: you will laugh, you will cry, and you will be amazed by this new writer.”—Diana Cohen, Books & Company Bookstore
“Wonderful, touching.”—The Nougat Magazine
“Andrea Portes’s debut novel, through her teenage protagonist, explores themes of abandonment, abuse, and poverty. Her approach is so subtle and non-preachy that Hick’s cinematic equivalent would be more indie drama than after-school special. . . . Portes succeeds here by removing the melodrama from such a downbeat story and presenting her torn world as utterly real. She makes Luli’s pain real, too. Luli’s endurance, consequently, can only inspire.” —PopMatters
“[A] chilling debut.”—Publishers Weekly
"Reading Andrea Portes makes you feel like your elbows are damp from having been resting in beer-bottle condensation rings on a wobbly table in the kind of dive bar where sooner or later – and bet on sooner – somebody's going to have a pool cue broken over his head, and the guy wielding the cue is going to know enough to swing it from the narrow end because it's not the first time for him or, for that matter, the guy getting clocked....
Portes is the woman sitting at the table with you – young, a little drunk and too smart by three-fourths. She's reeling off a real spellbinder about a few horrific days in her grimy-blue-collar upbringing in a rural Nebraska so sere and bleak and emotionally sandblasted that it'd make an off-the-shelf trailer park look like Rancho Santa Fe. Actually it's not Portes, but Luli McMullen, the narrator of Portes' knockout – as in a right cross to the jaw – debut novel 'Hick'." - The San Diego Union-Tribune
"It's an exceptional debut effort and hopefully the beginning of a great career." - Emerging Writers Network
"'Hick' is a bracing drama, a study in tenacity against the gnarled teeth of domestic storms." - Los Angeles Times
"Portes is an edgy writer whose talent is apparent on every page. Her honest, raw portrayal of Luli is harrowing, yet Portes also punctuates many of her observations with a keen and jaded humor." - Rocky Mountain News
“For everyone whose childhood wasn't perfect; for everyone whose parents disappointed; for everyone whose adolescent dreams were changed or abandoned; for everyone, there's Hick by Andrea Portes. Abandoned by her parents, 13 year-old Luli decides to hitch hike to Las Vegas in search of a sugar daddy. What she finds isn't as sweet as she's imagined.” —Keri Holmes, The Kaleidoscope Bookstore
“There probably was a time in the U.S. when parents read books to their kids at night; a time when people really cared about their neighbors and acted appropriately. Luli is America gone wrong personified. Hick is the coming of age novel for our twisted times.” —Jeffrey A. Tipton, author of Surviving the City
Bio
Andrea Portes grew up in rural Nebraska, later shuffling between Illinois, Texas, Brazil, North Dakota and North Carolina before attending Bryn Mawr College. She received her
MFA from UC San Diego and became a script reader for Paramount Pictures. She now lives in Los Angeles and is a nightlife columnist for several websites. Hick is her first novel.
Andrea Portes on MySpace
Hick on MySpace
Andrea on Flickr
HICK AT LARGE: Los Angeles on YouTube
Portes Reading at Pairie Lights Books (July 9)
Unbridled Aloud featuring Andrea Portes
Excerpt
Somewhere between Palmyra and Alliance, a beat-up green and white pick-up truck, with a gun rack in the back, pulls up behind me while I’m singing to myself. I look inside and there, in the driver’s seat, sits a skinny bug-eyed cowboy who looks like a turtle. He looks like he must have spent the last ten days straight chasing squealers in the rodeo and hasn’t changed since. He’s got on one of them old fashioned western shirts with a pattern of little rose flowers faded dingy into grey, mother-of-pearl snaps gleaming creamy in a line from his chest down to his jeans, untucked. He’s got a look about him that you wouldn’t be surprised if he just busted out of the nervous hospital.
He rolls down the window and shouts over the wind,
“Where you headed?”
“Las Vegas.”
He looks me up and down.
“Aren’t you a little bit young and, maybe say, innocent to be traveling to Las Vegas all by your little self?”
He’s got this tone in his voice like he’s got three friends snickering, hunkering down in the cab and this is all a little joke between them.
“No.” I straighten up a bit. “What about you, mister? Where you headed?”
“Well, I don’t see how that’s any of your business…and my name’s not Mister, it’s Eddie. Eddie Kreezer.”
I smile and make a bashful act, bending over myself, trying to let him sneak a peek of my newfound bubbles, hoping for a free ride. I figure I can turn his none-of-your-business into Las Vegas with a little bit of sugar. My age makes him nervous and shamey, cause his eyes keep heading southwards and then back up, guilty. I can tell I can make his eyes swirl and that’s just about all I want to do.
“You some kinda runaway?”
“No. My dad ran away and left me.”
This is my new version of my life story.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I guess he thought I could fend for myself, but I sure could use a ride, Mister, Eddie, and I’m just worried sick that I won’t find a place to stay before dark and I guess I’m just plum scared and all cause-”
“What’s your dad look like? Maybe I seen him.” He takes off his hat and squints at the brim like he’s inspecting it.
“You.”
There is a silence as he looks me up and down. Then he just starts laughing, real hard and loud, like his make-believe friends just jumped out the back and the dashboard just turned into a bar.
“Oh my God, what in the world is in store for me here.” He says, shaking his head and smiling to himself, “Well, well, well…”
I don’t really get his little private joke, but I smile anyways, not wanting to seem dumb or too young or rude even. I resolve to take the reins.
“You gonna give me a ride or are you just gonna sit there and laugh at yourself all day?”
He stops laughing.
“Oh, I get it, you’re some kinda ten-year-old smart-ass or something.”
“Try thirteen.” I say, real smug.
“Well. You’re just about old enough to have kids then, aren’t ya?”
He sneers gritty through the corner of his mouth, like uncle Nipper used to do when the ashtray says he’s been up all night and the bottle of Jack confirms it with two sips left. For once in my life I am struck dumb for words and I don’t like it. I shift my attention to the ground and shuffle my feet through the gravel, praying he’ll give me a lift, at least to Kearney. Later on I’ll think of something good to say, some perfect comeback topped with whipped cream and a smile.
“Well, don’t just stand there, git in if you wanna.”
He unhitches the lock and stares at me through the window, like he’s daring me. I have never turned down a dare in my life and I’m not about to start now, just cause I can’t think of nothing clever to say to turn me into the starlet of his private movie. I put my head back on my shoulders, real high, open the door and hop in. There is a moment of silence while we both contemplate our new situation.
“You got any money?” He doesn’t look at me when he says it. He looks straight ahead, calculating into the sun.
“No, but I’m good at stealing.”
“Well, at least you’re good for something.”
Then he peels off onto the road so fast the back of the truck swishes out over the gravel in a C and something in my heart lurches forward, like a roller coaster at the very top, when you can’t see what’s coming but you’re bracing for a steep drop.