Kate Malone is the perfect student, the perfect preacher’s daughter, the perfect girlfriend.  At least she is until the elements of her life come together under pressure and transform her in ways that she could never imagine.

Kate deals with the stress of waiting to hear is she is accepted by MIT–the one and only school she applied to–by running late in the night.  She makes sure her little brother gets his medicine and picks up after her minister father who is too busy helping everyone else to pay much attention to Kate.  At school she is going through the motions, waiting for a letter that never comes.  Then the neighbor’s house burns down and Kate must share her room and home with Terri Litch, her worst enemy.  An unspeakable tragedy drives Kate and her friends apart and joins them together again in entirely new patterns.

Once again Laurie Halse Anderson has created compelling characters who must muddle through life’s complications the best way they know how in Catalyst (Speak 2002).  Just like in the chemical equations that introduce each chapter, life sometimes takes common elements and transforms them in unimaginable ways.  You won’t find any easy answers in this powerful story, but you will find that there is a way out, even when it seems the world is coming to an end.