daughter-of-books-and-lonliness:
OKAY
so
when i was a kid (about 10),I found this coverless book on the ground behind a bookcase and i started reading it just because it was there. to this day its one of my favorite romance stories and one of my favorite books, but I still have no idea what it was called.
Basically, it was this story about this older high school NDN girl who had moved to this small town in the middle of nowhere Appalachia. She liked to go on walks and stuff, so she was just kind of wandering through the woods, when all of a sudden she fell through the forest floor into this underground cave. And got knocked out. And while she was coming to, she felt all this stuff moving all over her, and even though she knew she had fallen in a hole, she woke up on the ground about 10 feet up from where she’d fell.
And so, spooked but curious, she kept revisiting the cave and whatever. and she meets this guy who lives in there and hes basically made of dirt and leaves and rocks. He’s not like a hot guy, he;s literally almost faceless and 100% not human looking.
He tells her that like hundreds of years ago, his (white) people came and decided to settle on NDN land. But the NDNs in the area didn’t like it much, so they started fighting.His family was getting ready to leave the town and leave the NDNs alone, but the tribe cursed them to “return back to the soil” and everyone he knew was sucked into the cave and slowly began to turn into rock/mud/greenery.
And through the book she just keeps visiting him more and more and learning about his culture and slowly she falls in love with him/ his personality. And there was all this wonderful descriptive imagery about how holding his hand was cold and rough and how he smelled like earth and rock in winter and how his voice was like whistling through trees and boulders rubbing against each other all at once and whatever. and how he didn’t even have eyes and how the longer he stayed in the cave the less human he became and how the cave was STILL FILLED WITH THE WHOLE VILLAGE but pretty much everyone but him had completely faded into dust/rock/dirt/green and no longer remembered that they had ever been human. It was so SO SO COOL
But ~anyway~ at the same time as the MC was hanging around with rock bro, this real human guy was like trying to date her and everyone kept pressuring her to date him because he was popular and she wasn’t having it at all really.
But near the end of the school year, the dude asks her to prom and her best friend is like you HAVE to GO! so she goes shopping with them and gets a dress and gets stuff for it, but on the night of prom, while she’s getting ready, she like looks at herself in the mirror and is like NO.
anD INSTEAD OF GOING TO PROM SHE LIKE, LEAVES AND RUNS THROUGH THE WOODS TO THE CAVE AND FINDS HIM AND SHE’S LIKE I DON’T CARE ABOUT DUMB HIGH SCHOOL BOYS IM IN LOVE WITH YOU ROCK GUY I DO NOT CARE THAT YOU DON’T HAVE HUMAN PARTS ANYMORE UR GR8 M8
and he is like “omg me too but like, I am immortal AND FADING INTO ROCK FAST and also you should date human boys and stuff so stay away from me/this cave because ur fucking up ur life.”
and he tells her not to ever come back.
AND SHE CRIES AND TRIES TO BUT SHE MISSES HIM SO MUCH (because he’s so fucking cool man)
but anyway, I think at the end, she like, jumps into the cave and dies.
but its one of those endings where it describes her leaping in and then when she gets down there, hands MADE OF ROCK AND MOSS cover her and consume her until things fade to black and when she comes to, a hand is reaching down into the cave (a human hand) and pulls her up
and outside in the woods are THE ROCK GUY’S ENTIRE VILLAGE DRESSED IN THEIR OLD TIMEY CLOTHES AND THE ROCK GUY WHO SHE FELL IN LOVE WITH IS HUMAN AGAIN TOO AND HE IS SO BEAUTIFUL AND BASICALLY SHE BROKE THE CURSE BY BEING AN NDN AND LOVING SOMEONE FROM THE CURSED DUTCH SETTLERS AND THE ROCK GUY TAKES HER HAND AND THEY WALK OFF INTO THE AFTERLIFE AND OH MY GOD GUYS IM CRYING AGAIN.
Uhm…I NEED TO KNOW THE NAME OF THIS BOOK
LIKE
RIGHT NOW
PLEASEi have been searching for this book for almost 15 years with no success.
How old was this book? It would have to be at least 15-16 years old by now, but probably older.
What genre? fantasy romance? kids’ romance? YA romance?
how long was it?
every detail
these are the things i need to know kayla!
It was supposed to be horror i think. It was a cheap paperback 90′s horror-romance. and I don’t think it was YA I think it was an adult book with a young protagonist.
If I remember correctly it was about as long as your average cozy mystery.
honestly, if anyone can come up with the name, i kind want to know too.
If anyone can find out this ridiculous mystery book’s origin, I will personally go back and message each and every person who has commented wanting to know what book it was the title and author.
I’ve asked about this over at whatsthatbook.com, just to see if anyone there knows.
The Archery Range 