“Summer in the City of Roses” by Michelle Ruiz Keil

A protective older sister goes on a quest to rescue her brother in Summer in The City of Roses

The grunge/riot grrl era the Pacific Northwest in particular experienced in the early 1990s has always been a highly mythologized time, especially for elder millennials like your friendly correspondents who just missed it by a handful of years. In her new young adult novel Summer in the City of Roses Michelle Ruiz Keil transports readers back to the Portland of the 1990s -- while also blending in Greek mythology, family trauma and a search for identity and home.