Devil and the Bluebird
Devil and the Bluebird is a 2016 young adult novel by Jennifer Mason-Black. Synopsis Blue Riley, a seventeen year old folk musician from a small town in Maine, makes a deal with the Devil to save the soul of her missing sister Cass. The deal requires Blue to find her sister within six months or both she and her sister lose their souls. Blue agrees to forfeit her voice to the Devil in exchange for a pair of magical boots that will help her on the journey. Blue begins a trek across the United States to find Cass, carrying her mother's guitar and the magic boots. Blue's odyssey follows the same route that her dead mother and her mother's partner Tish had taken in the past. During the journey, she struggles with her feelings over Tish abandoning them and her mother's death from cancer. Themes and references The novel is a retelling of the Greek epic Odyssey. Caitlyn Paxson of NPR compared it to the Coen brothers' film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, writing that both works "blur the lines between harsh reality and a backwoods sort of magical realism." Justin Barisich of BookPage described the narrative as a modernized