Rogue Touch
Anna Marie has had a tough life. She gets by living in Section Eight housing in Jackson, Mississippi, and relying on food stamps because whenever she finds a job, something bad always happens. It doesn’t help that she has white streaks in her hair and that she wears long sleeves, gloves, and leather no matter how hot it gets and won’t touch anyone, not even a handshake. One night she meets James, a guy who is probably the only other person in sultry Mississippi who dresses like her. The two end up on the run in a stolen car. James calls her Rogue, and she calls him Touch. It turns out that he is from another world: Arcadia, an imperiled utopia. It takes a lot of creativity to write a love story with a heroine who can’t touch her lover, not to mention bridging a 10,000-year age difference and two vastly different home planets. Amazingly enough, Woodward succeeds, putting a fresh spin on Rogue, a Marvel Comics X-Men regular, in this entertaining and thoroughly original romance. --Diana Tixier Herald