Watermark

A talented Philadelphia high school swimmer with a bleak family life turns up missing in Schiller's (Even if Your Heart Would Listen, 2019) dark melodrama. After a New Year's Eve party to usher in 1993, Angel Ferente doesn't make it home. Angel is a senior at Kennedy Academic High School, where she's a star on the swim team. The team also includes her best friend, Alex Williamson, and her "sometimes boyfriend," Jamal Joyner. Her home life, however, is troubling. Her mother, Rita, who goes by "Pic," has spent time in rehab and, several years prior, lost custody of Angel and her little sister, Jeannine. But now the girls live with Pic and her spiteful, unemployed husband, Frank, along with the couple's young daughters, Kathleen and Joy. Before she disappeared, Angel had been caring for the other girls in between seemingly endless arguments with Pic and Frank. Though Angel has run away in the past, as when she suddenly left to see her biological father in New Jersey, Alex and Jeannine are worried because no one has any idea where she has gone. While some in the Philly community search for the missing teen, her friends and family can only hope that someone will find Angel--and that she's still alive. Schiller's tale, told through the alternating narrative perspectives of Alex and Jeannine, is an absorbing character study of Angel as well as of Jeannine. Both narrators provide insight into Angel, who uses swimming less for personal achievement and more as an escape from the home that occasionally leaves her with visible bruises. But readers learn just as much about Jeannine, an exceptionally smart girl whom many disregard because she rarely speaks in public. The author balances the generally somber story with amiable characters, from tough but compassionate swim coach "CJ" Rhodes to Alex's mom, Claire, who's a teacher at the same school. The tight, unembellished prose makes for an easy read and even adds a hint of mystery, as readers know neither Angel's fate nor the identity of the person sending her anonymous, suggestive letters. A measured, affecting look at a struggling and burdened teenager.

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