I was unsure about this when I saw it in the bookstore, but I’m glad I gave it a chance because I ended up thinking it was quite good. Sometimes it’s good to push through my initial negative reaction! Gumshoe is a magical realist middle grade/YA graphic novel (definitely appropriate for middle schoolers, but it’s dense and complex enough that I think it’d be good for the YA reader as well) about Willa, who has intense social anxiety and wants more than anything to be a mailwoman (her words, although the back cover copy states “mail carrier,” but Willa says “mailwoman” throughout so I’ll go with it.). She lives in a small town in Arizona, Stony Lonesome, and has no friends, spending her time practicing how to deliver mail. In this world, there are tons of myths and legends around the mail outlaw Two Gum Tilly, who steals the birthday cards of children because she never got any mail herself as a child, and everyone is on the lookout for her.
Willa tries to leave her local mailman a letter asking if she can shadow him and gets too nervous and takes it back out of his mailbox. He sees her and mistakenly thinks she’s Two Gum Tilly. When he starts chasing her, Willa runs away and ends up joining a group of runaway girls who work for Susanna, who is trying to fight back against the mail thief. The basic setup is that they do a loop of the towns Two Gum Tilly hits and steal the cards before she does, then return them. Each of the other girls has their own reason for leaving home and Willa has to learn how to find her voice and her strength as she travels along.
I thought this was a very heartfelt and touching book, and I liked all of the magical realism elements. The focus on the power of the mail especially struck home for me, as someone who loves mail. I also liked the way each girl had their own arc and how they got to know each other and supported one another in the face of many difficulties. I especially enjoyed Dogie, a cat who wears a tiny cowboy hat, and the all-cat concert at the fair. There are lots of touches like that that made this book feel like a nice dream. The colors were striking and extremely well done. Overall, this made me feel like I should go back and give the Sheets trilogy another chance!
