From Goodreads: Callie LeRoux lives in Slow Run, Kansas, helping her mother run their small hotel and trying not to think about the father she’s never met. Lately all of her energy is spent battling the constant storms plaguing the Dust Bowl and their effects on her health. Callie is left alone when her mother goes missing in a dust storm. Her only hope comes from a mysterious man offering a few clues about her destiny and the path she must take to find her parents in “the golden hills of the west”: California.

Along the way she meets Jack, a young hobo boy who is happy to keep her company — there are dangerous, desperate people at every turn. And there’s also an otherworldly threat to Callie. Warring fae factions, attached to the creative communities of American society, are very much aware of the role this half-mortal, half-fae teenage girl plays in their fate.

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I’m sorry to say that I am not a fan of this novel.  I never connected with the characters and I spent a good amount of time just trying to figure out what was happening.  While I knew there would be paranormal elements to the novel, I think I also thought it would be somewhat historical as it deals with dust storms, and I was thinking the great Dust Bowl from the 1930s, but I soon found out that this isn’t what it’s about at all.  While there are dust storms, it’s more or less about a fairy girl who must travel the Great Plains looking for her parents.  I was following the story fairly well until Callie played the piano, the dust bowl rolled in, and giant bugs came to the hotel.  At that point, though I tried to follow, I became lost in the mayhem of the story. 

Without a connection with the characters, I found that I struggled to finish this novel, but I made it through.  It does end of a kind of cliffhanger, and it piqued my interest, so yes, I’ll probably read the sequel when it comes out, but this novel didn’t pull me in as I had hoped.  Two stars.

Random House Children’s Books has been extrmely gracious in allowing me to read an ARC of this novel, via Netgalley, prior to its release on June 26, 2012