Bonnie- Sue Hitchcock Blends Nar- Ratives of Indigenous and Non- Into a Buffet of Pain and Beauty

THE SMELL OF OTHER people’S HOUSES SNEAK PEEK PRAISE FOR The Smell of Other People’s Houses “The physical landscape of Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock’s Alaska is raw, beautiful and wholly unfamiliar, but the true wonder of this thrilling, arresting debut novel is that the emotional landscape feels just as powerful—and just as untrammeled.” — Gayle Forman, New York Times bestselling author of If I Stay and I Was Here “Hitchcock’s debut resonates with the timeless quality of a clas- sic. This is a fascinating character study— a poetic interweaving of rural isolation and coming- of- age.” — John Corey Whaley, author of the Michael L. Printz Award winner Where Things Come Back “An honest, gritty, and moving portrait of growing up in Alaska. Only someone who knows and loves this place through and through could tell this story. This book is Alaska.” — Eowyn Ivey, author of the New York Times bestseller The Snow Child “As only a native of Alaska can, Bonnie- Sue Hitchcock blends nar- ratives of indigenous and non- into a buffet of pain and beauty. Highly recommended.” — Tim Tingle, Choctaw author of the series How I Became a Ghost Hitc_9780553497786_4p_all_r3.indd 1 11/11/15 11:57 AM “The untamed landscape is reflected in the wilderness of the human heart. Hitchcock shows us that it’s possible to survive the crossings between wealthy and impoverished, indigenous and settler, proving that any line that divides can just as easily bind.” — Anne Keala Kelly (Kanaka `Oiwi),¯ filmmaker and journalist “The Alaskan answer to The House on Mango Street, with full, round portraits presented with poetry, grace, and insight.” — David Cheezem, Fireside Books, Palmer, AK “This is a novel of second chances, of teens being teens, and of what it meant to be the first generation of youth in Alaska to experience statehood. Truly universal.” — Kari Meutsch, Phoenix Books, Burlington and Essex, VT “A thoughtful, realistic novel about community, both the one you are born into, and the one you can create.” — Erin Barker, Hooray for Books!, Alexandria, VA “As Sherman Alexie and Louise Erdrich showed readers life on Native American reservations, now Bonnie- Sue Hitchcock shares the lives of native and white inhabitants of Alaska shortly after it became a state. Poignant and heart- wrenching.” — Danielle Borsch, Vroman’s Bookstore, Pasadena, CA Hitc_9780553497786_4p_all_r3.indd 2 11/11/15 11:57 AM T H E S M E L L OF O T H E R PEOPLE’S HOUSES Bonnie- Sue Hitchcock KEEP READING FOR A SNEAK PEEK. Hitc_9780553497786_2p_all_r1.indd 3 8/21/15 8:51 AM This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Text copyright © 2016 by Bonnie- Sue Hitchcock Jacket art copyright © 2016 by Getty Images Interior illustrations copyright © 2016 by Rebecca Poulson Map copyright © 2016 by Kayley Lefaiver Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: Chandonnet, Ann: Lines from “In the Cranberry Gardens” from Ptarmigan Valley: Poems of Alaska by Ann Chandonnet. Reprinted by permission of Ann Chandonnet. Straley, John: Haikus by John Straley. Reprinted by permission of John Straley. White Carlstrom, Nancy: Lines from “Sun at the Top of the World” from Midnight Dance of the Snowshoe Hare by Nancy White Carlstrom. Reprinted by permission of Nancy White Carlstrom. All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Wendy Lamb Books and the colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC. A previous version of the title chapter was published as Fast Fiction in the Los Angeles Review, Volume 18, Fall 2012. Visit us on the Web! randomhouseteens.com Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Hitchcock, Bonnie-Sue The smell of other people’s houses / Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock. — First edition. pages cm Summary: “Growing up in Alaska in the 1970s isn’t like growing up anywhere else: Don’t think life is going to be easy. Know your place. And never talk about yourself. Four vivid voices tell intertwining stories of hardship, tragedy, wild luck, and salvation”—Provided by publisher. ISBN 978-0-553-49778-6 (trade) — ISBN 978-0-553-49779-3 (lib. bdg.) — ISBN 978-0-553-49781-6 (pbk.) — ISBN 978-0-553-49780-9 (ebook) 1. Alaska— History—20th century—Juvenile fiction. [1. Alaska—History—20th century—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.1.H58Sm 2016 [Fic]—dc23 2015011309 The text of this book is set in 12- point Apollo. Jacket design by Ray Shappell Interior design by Trish Parcell Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 First Edition Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read. ATTENTION READER: THIS IS AN UNCORRECTED ADVANCE EXCERPT Hitc_9780553497786_3p_all_r1.indd 4 9/28/15 10:50 AM Cast of Key Characters (roughly in order of introduction; narrators in boldface) IN FAIRBANKS, ALASKA IN SOUTHEAST ALASKA AND CANADA Ruth Mama Alyce Daddy Mom Lily: Ruth’s younger sister Dad Gran Aunt Abigail: Selma’s mother Ray Uncle Gorky Dumpling Bunny: Lily’s best friend, Hank Dumpling’s younger sister Sam: Hank’s younger brother Selma: Ruth’s best friend Jack: Hank’s youngest brother Alyce: Selma’s cousin Mom Dora: Dumpling’s best friend Nathan: Mom’s boyfriend Bumpo: Dora’s dad Phil: night watchman on the Mr. Moses: Dumpling’s dad ferry Isabelle: social worker Dora Ruth Crazy Dancing Guy Mom Abbess Dumpling’s mother Sister Agnes Paula and Annette: Mom’s Sister Bernadette friends Sister Josephine George: cashier at the Salvation Army Hitc_9780553497786_1p_all_r2.indd 7 8/10/15 3:02 PM PROLOGUE The Way Things Were Back Then RUTH, 1958– 63 I can’t stop remembering the way things were back then. How my father hunted for our food. How he’d hang the deer in the garage to cure and how the deer’s legs would splay out when its belly was sliced open, its hooves pointy like a ballerina’s toes. I watched him dozens of times as he cut the meat off the animal’s backside. I can still hear how the knife sounded when metal scraped bone. Backstrap was the best cut, my favorite, and Daddy sliced it off the deer’s spine as beautifully as Mama curled ribbons on presents. He carried the fresh meat to the house in his bare hands, blood drip- ping all the way from the garage and across Mama’s shiny linoleum to the kitchen sink. Sometimes Daddy would bring me a still- warm deer heart 1 Hitc_9780553497786_2p_all_r1.indd 1 8/24/15 11:23 AM in a bowl and let me touch it with my fingers. I would put my lips to it and kiss its smooth, pink flesh, hoping to feel it beating, but it was all beat out. Mama would call him Daniel Boone as she laughed into his bare neck and he twirled his bloody fingers through her hair and they danced around the kitchen. Mama was the kind of person who put wild flowers in whiskey bottles. Lupine and foxglove in the kitchen, lilacs in the bathroom. She smelled like marshy muskeg after a hard rain, and even with blood in her hair, she was beautiful. My easel was set up on the counter, so I could watch Mama cook the meat while I painted in the tutu Daddy had brought me from one of his many trips Outside. It had match- ing pink ballet slippers that I wore constantly, even to bed. Mama buttoned one of Daddy’s big flannel shirts over me so I wouldn’t ruin my special tutu. It hung all the way down to my toes; the long sleeves were rolled up so many times, it was like having big, bulging cinnamon rolls for arms. I tried to make red that was the same color as the red in Mama’s hair, but mostly I mixed everything together and got brown. Daddy often said things I didn’t understand, like if statehood passed we would probably lose all of our hunting rights and the Feds would run everything into the ground. My five- year- old brain thought statehood was a new car, one with a really big front end. I didn’t know who the Feds were, but Daddy seemed to think they were going to tell people how much venison and salmon they would be allowed to eat. Mama’s belly had grown big and round, which even I knew 2 Hitc_9780553497786_2p_all_r1.indd 2 8/21/15 8:51 AM meant another mouth to feed. Daddy would pull up her shirt and kiss her ballooned stomach the same way I had kissed the deer heart. “Is it all beat out?” I asked him. Her belly was as white as the underside of a doe. “This one’s definitely still beating,” he said. “No worries there.” Statehood turned out to be not a new car but something much, much bigger, and Daddy had to fly to Washington, DC, to try and stop it— a place where he had to show his passport just to get off the plane, and nobody hunted or fished, and he had to buy new shoes to go to a meeting to talk about why Alaskans didn’t want statehood.

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