Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to preview this ARC of Rust & Stardust.

First of all, let me just say, I adore T. Greenwood. She has written some of my favorite books. But I have mixed feelings about this one.

Greenwood does something that should have been done a long time ago. She gives a voice to Sally Horner, the young girl who was abducted in 1948 and provided inspiration for the story Lolita.

Here's your trigger warning, this is truly every parents worst nightmare, and especially in the beginning, so hard to read. It never ceases to amaze me just how narcissistic and manipulative people can be. To not only get away with a child abduction, but to keep them for as long as he did. Greenwood takes a lot of liberties with this story, largely by adding fictional characters and probably fictional drama to Sally's story, which made me a bit uncomfortable? Here's your spoiler alert, Sally's whole life is tragic, from beginning to end, so to add intrigue and entertainment to her story feels inappropriate and exploitive. But flip that coin over, and I also really appreciated being able to hear her story and learn more about this poor young victim. So, there you go.

A harrowing take on what happened to Sally Horner those two years she was abducted and the couple of years following. A heart breaking rendering...and very well written. The story is compelling and completely gripping due to the variation of viewpoint as well as the level of detail involved in the storyline. It really made me appreciate my own life and understand how lucky I am and how dangerous the world can be for some. I will never understand how some people come to be like La Salle. This is an extremely sad story and is not for the weak of heart to read..

Thank you to St. Martins Press and NetGalley for gifting me with an ARC of Rust & Stardust in exchange for my honest review.

I read this book in one sitting with my heart pulsating, holding my breath in dread and anticipation. Artistically told, I was introduced to a true crime event I was unfamiliar with. In June of 1948, 11 year old Sally Horner was abducted under the most bizarre circumstances and held captive for two years. Her story is believed to be the basis for Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.

Told in multiple points of view, one gets the perspective of victim, family members, law enforcers and acquaintances who knew intrinsically something was wrong but not sure how to help young Sally. Frank LaSalle a convicted rapist and kidnapper preyed on the innocence of Sally, convincing her he was with the FBI and she was in trouble with the law.

While the story is horrifying, T. Greenwood presents it in such a respectful, graceful manner. Your heart will ache for Sally, her mother and the tragic circumstances that destroyed both their lives. I highly recommend this stunning tale.

‘I’m gonna need for you to come with me,’ he said, tugging at her arm to pull her along.’

Camden, NJ, 1948. Sally Horner is just 11 years old when wanting to be part of girls’ club changes her life forever. To join, Sally must steal something from the local Woolworth’s. Sally knows that stealing is wrong, but she longs to belong. Sally takes a notebook, but just as she gets to the front door she’s accosted by a man:
’I’m sorry, miss, but you’re going to need to come with me.’.

The man tells her that he is an FBI agent, and because he likes her, he’s not going to hand her to the police. The man is Frank LaSalle, a 52-year-old man, fresh from prison. He convinces Sally do as he says. This involves a complicated story, which has Sally’s mother initially believing that Frank LaSalle is the father of a friend of Sally’s and is taking her on a holiday.

So begins almost two years of physical and mental abuse as Frank LaSalle takes Sally westward from Camden. Sworn to secrecy, fearing for her mother and her sister, Sally suffers in silence. Some of those she meets along the way are concerned for her, but they (and the police) seem to always be one step behind.

‘Don’t worry about your mama, Sally. They’ll forget about you soon. It’ll be like you never was.’

The real-life kidnapping of Sally Horner is one of the inspirations behind Vladimir Nabokov’s novel ‘Lolita’. Near the end of ‘Lolita’, Nabokov writes: ‘Had I done to Dolly, perhaps, what Frank Lasalle, a fifty-year-old mechanic, had done to eleven-year-old Sally Horner in 1948?’ I’ve read ‘Lolita’ three times, but I never looked for any information behind this reference until after reading this novel. Both ‘Lolita’ and this novel are fiction, but Sally Horner’s abduction is fact. In this novel Ms Greenwood draws Sally from the shadows and gives her a voice. Imagine being an eleven (and then twelve) year old girl in her situation. Imagine feeling unable to tell anyone what was happening, for fear of what might happen to you or to those you love?

‘Please let them find me, she thought. Before it’s too late.’

Ms Greenwood explores this period in Sally’s life from several different angles. Her mother, her sister, her brother-in-law and a couple of the people she meets along the way are each part of the story. Perhaps her mother was naïve and trusting, perhaps Sally should have tried harder to escape. It’s always easy to wonder why other people act the way they do (or do not). By presenting this story in the way she does, Ms Greenwood invites the reader to imagine being Sally, or one of the other people worried for her. But for Sally there is little comfort, no escape.

‘Why didn’t anyone try to save her?’

Those who know the story of Sally Horner know how it will end. Those who do not will, like me, be turning the pages hoping that Sally will be rescued. Some, like me, finding the suspense unbearable will do some research before the end of the novel. Whichever way you choose to approach Sally’s story, it’s uncomfortable.
I did not enjoy this novel in any conventional sense of the word. I was profoundly moved by it, reduced to tears
at times, occasionally taking heart from the small pieces of humanity Sally benefitted from on her journey. How can it be that so many of us remember ‘Lolita’ but have never explored Sally Horner’s story? Ms Greenwood has written a powerful and moving novel, imagining aspects of Sally Horner’s journey. This is not an easy read, but I think it will prove unforgettable.

And the title ‘Rust and Stardust’?

‘My car is limping, Dolores Haze,
And the last long lap is the hardest,
And I shall be dumped where the weed decays,
And the rest is rust and stardust.’
― Vladimir Nabokov, ‘Lolita’

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and St Martin’s Press for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

accomplished if not uninspiring. I had a difficult time staying focused reading this & found it too often felt like a teen drama tv show in novella form

Engaging and griping, Rust and Stardust is the fictionalized story of Sally Horner, an inspiration of the infamous Lolita.
Sally Horner is caught trying to steal a cheap composition notebook in New Jersey in 1948. The "FBI agent" tells her she must go with him to face trail over the event. So begins a years long capture of an eleven year old girl by a 50-sometyhing pervert. While the novel is the fictionalized version of these events, the majority of the story's components are factual.
I finished this book in two days because the book was engaging and the chapters short enough to spur the reader to want to know what happens next. The story fallows the point of view of a variety of characters including Sally h, her mother, and those she meets along the way.
As both a novel lover and a true crime buff, I loved Rust & Stardust; I was entrance at page 1.

This book broke my heart! What a beautiful story and amazing set of characters. I will be posting my review on June 7, 2018, in my blog, A Room With Review at this address: https://abookwithreview.blogspot.com/

*** Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review***
I was initially drawn to Rust and Stardust because I live in Camden County close to where Sally Horner grew up. I also am a huge Lolita fan, so I was shocked that I was not familiar with this story. The author does make sure to say that this is historical fiction, not a true crime or biography, but the story felt so real. Although I warn that this is not an easy read emotionally, I definitely recommend this novel. I was instantly drawn to the story and rooted for little Sally Horner from page one.

Wow. What a story. Based on a true story, this is one unforgettable read. I cried and raged over Sally's words as we read about what happened to her. My heart ached and broke for her. This book devastates with its brutal honesty. A must-read story and a must-read author.

This was an incredibly touching, difficult story. When I read in the blurb that it was the inspiration (or one of them) for Lolita, I was intrigued. I didn't know exactly what to expect, but figured it would feature a rather wicked temptress-type young girl, manipulative and rather dislikable - as Lolita does. Instead I found myself heartbroken for the unbelievable string of horribles that fell upon a poor, innocent, sad, lonely little girl. A girl who, through one single action committed in the desperation for acceptance that only young girls can understand, made a critical and life-altering mistake that she literally spent the rest of her days paying for... It was a devastating read and I wanted to put it down just to stop feeling the walls closing in as Sally's days with Frank LaSalle just kept piling one on top of the other.

And yet despite the abuse, the fear and torment, and the darkness of her days, what I found most unbelievable in this tale was Sally's ability to find joy in small places hidden among the shadows of her off-the-grid existence. Circus people. Diving horses. A puppy. A mother-figure desperate for someone to mother. Sally manages to eke out a childhood - not much of one, mind you, but one nevertheless - despite LaSalle's best efforts to break her of all childish experiences...

That's the miracle of the story. But it's mired in so much horror that it can be difficult to see it that way... Still, the writing is utterly compelling, as is Sally herself. And so are the thought-experiments, the what-ifs and how-could-theys that populate this story. Even though the world was a different place at the time, it's hard to imagine a mother sending her child off with the "father" of a school friend she's never met, for an indefinite and continually extended vacation, let alone receiving numerous post cards that only ever mention her young daughter doing things with said father and never thinking anything was awry...

That's only one example of the parade of oddities that comprised Sally's life with Frank, but it's a big one. And it leads to fascinating thoughts of blame and responsibility, what it means to be a parent, how much we are responsible for the things that our children do and think. Why was Sally so quick to believe that Frank could have her imprisoned - and so willing to believe it for so long? Why was her mother so quick to believe her daughter suddenly fell into such good luck as to find a great friend and be invited away for a great vacation? Why was Sally so willing to accept that her mother - let alone her sister - had given up on her? Why was her fear so great that she never took the chance to reach out to her family - or even another adult? One can get lost in the whys and what-fors and lose sight of the fact that none of that matters, in the end. What matters is that a man preyed on a child, and she paid the ultimate price for that predation. Whether anyone else - Sally included - could have mitigated the circumstances once the ball began rolling is almost beside the point. Evil exists, and it has throughout time. One can only hope that we remember stories like these, because the biggest tragedy would be if their victims (both the actual victims like Sally herself, and the victims friends/families who suffer right along with them) were not only mistreated but also forgotten...

Fantastic book. I wasn't familiar with the story this was based on so I was a complete newbie to this story as well as this writer. Both were great. I can't wait to read more from the author in the future and thought this was a solid five star read.

Inspired by a real life kidnapping case, this is a story of malevolence and true evil. In 1948, Sally is only 11 years old when she steals a notebook from the local dime store in Camden, New Jersey. On the street outside, she’s accosted by a man who claims to be an FBI agent and tells her she will go to jail if she doesn’t do everything he says. In reality, the man is Frank LaSalle, and he’s just been released from prison. Terrified, Sally goes with LaSalle, beginning an odyssey of pain and terror that will last two years as the two make their way cross-country to San Jose. I had never heard of this case, and the story just sent chills down my spine. This book is not an easy read because of its subject matter, but it’s incredibly well written and hard to put down

Sally Horner is a lonely 11 year girl, who would love to be part of a group of friends. One day she sees a group of girls cutting their thumbs and rubbing them together, as they become blood sisters. She walks up to them at lunch time to ask them about what she saw. They offer to make her part of their club, if she steals something from the Woolworth's that afternoon. So begins Sally's misfortune.... when she decided to steal and composition notebook and put it under her shirt, she is caught by an "FBI Man," who tells her that she is in big trouble. She did not know the half of it, as she is taken away by this FBI man, to go see the judge, and told not to worry her Mama, by telling her the truth. Instead, she is off on a lovely vacation with Vivi Peterson, one of the girls from the club (the only kind and decent young lady among them.) Mr. Peterson, is going down after his family left and is taking Sally with him. So, Sally's mom, wanting her to have something she would not otherwise have, puts her on the bus with a stranger, and it is a long time before she sees her baby girl again. This tale is based on a true story, and while fictionalized by the author, reads as if it is a biography of two + years in this young girls life. Your heart will break right along with Sally and her family as they travel on the roller coaster that starts on the day of the stolen notebook, and brings them all to another place entirely by the end of the story. While this is not a feel good book, it is a book that is hard to put down, due to the incredible writing of T. Greenwood.

This a sad story and it can break your heaet as it is based upon a true event.
The author did a great job making me feel for the characters, my emotions ran from anger to sadness to hope and everything in between.

I was very intrigued to read this story, taken from the real-life story of Sally Horner that supposedly inspired Nabokov's Lolita. But it was agonizingly slow, reading more like a non-fiction, moment-by-moment account of the real-life atrocities. I felt I could have just read Sally Horner's Wikipedia page and gotten the exact same story as is in "Rust & Stardust" in a third of the time.

I read Lolita when I was about 16. Although, Nabakov's writing was beautiful the book made me feel very uncomfortable. Just the idea that a grown man could harbor those feelings to a prepubescent girl was revolting. I am not naive I understood about child predators etc. but to have it right there on the page was disconcerting. But I read it from cover to cover. However, I did not know at the time that Nabakov used a true life crime as a sort of muse of some sort.


Summary: Rust and Stardust is the reimagined story of the characters which inspired Nabakov while he was writing Lolita. This is not a biography of Sally Horner and Frank LaSalle, but it is the internal dialog of Sally and the people that she comes into contact with over the 21 months that she was being held.


What I liked: I love the way Greenwood allowed each character a voice. Each "chapter" is narrated by a different character. You get to hear their inner dialog about Sally/Florence and their feelings after coming into contact with Sally and Frank. The pacing in this book is perfect and it is well written. There are some parts that may make people uncomfortable but Greenwood deals with these harsh realities of Sally Horner's life tastefully.


What I didn't like: There isn't anything I didn't like about this book.


Star Rating: 5


My thoughts: Even though Rust and Stardust is dealing with some pretty heavy subjects you aren't mired in sadness while reading the book. I am glad that Greenwood didn't gloss over how Sally's mother would have felt at her homecoming and her feelings toward some of the people she had met. But all in all she had such a short life that was filled with sadness that one is hard pressed to find any joy; Greenwood amazingly finds some small and brilliant signs of joy in this story.


Release Date: August 7th, 2018


I want to thank NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for allowing me to read the advanced readers copy for my honest review.

One of the most heart wrenching, tear-inducing, hanging on the edge of my seat books I have read in a really long time. All through Sally's ordeal, I could personally relate to everything she was going through. The author captured the raw emotions of Sally, her family, and all of the people that wanted to help, but at the time were unable. Many tears were shed in the reading of this novel, and I loved it.

Heartbreaking. While this is historical fiction, it reads very much like real life. It will make you ache and weepy and you will have no choice but to keep on reading because Greenwood's writing is lyrical and gripping.

"Rust and Stardust" is a novel that retells the story of Sally Horner, the real-life girl whose abduction and subsequent abuse at the hands of a disgusting excuse for oxygen named Frank LaSalle was probably the germ from which Nabokov got the idea for "Lolita."

The essential plot (it's not a spoiler) is this: Little Sally Horner is caught by a conman when she's getting in trouble. The poor child is convinced he's somehow the legal authority and that she must obey him. This sets up her abduction and the story of the book, which is told mostly through Sally's point of view, but with other players as well.

I'm trying to take apart this book as I sit here and stew on it. It's fast-moving--I read it in a night, unable to put it down. It's vivid; I left the book with the same tears-and-existential crisis that I had after reading "The Fault in Our Stars." And thankfully it is quite sensitive--the sexual abuse is handled with no detail, as Sally disassociates in a way that feels very real. (For this choice, the author really does deserve a lot of credit.)

Overall, the book seems to speak to the beauty of our flawed realities, the nature of grief, the power of memory, and the human capacity to love, to treat others with kindness and compassion. (Love is shown in this book in ordinary gestures, far from talk of romance or the horror of LaSalle.) And it is a final tribute to a poor child whose tragic story has been erased in popular memory in favor of twisted readings of the book that was born of her story, "Lolita."

This book was reviewed as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

This book was really well written. It was very sad though and a very frustrating read. The author did his job well. During the read you just want to rush ahead to the conclusion, you want something to happen to save her, you want to shake her and scream at her to do ‘this’ or ‘that’. So all in all it was a difficult book to read, and the author did a good job of propelling you through a series of emotions. I’m just left feeling sad and unfulfilled though. I do like how you see how the life of Sally then changed the lives of the others in the book. A difficult but good read.