Burned

About the Burned series

Pattyn Von Stratten is the oldest of six daughters in a strict Mormon household ruled by a violent, controlling father. Sent to her aunt's Nevada ranch for the summer as punishment for asking too many questions, she falls in love with a boy named Ethan and gets her first real taste of a life outside her father's control -- one that ends in tragedy in Burned (2006). Smoke, the sequel, picks up the aftermath: told in alternating voices between Pattyn, on the run from the law and grieving Ethan and the child she lost, and her younger sister Jackie, left behind to face their father alone.

Burned became one of Ellen Hopkins's most frequently challenged books, drawing sustained attention from school-censorship groups for its treatment of abuse and sexuality -- a controversy Hopkins has spoken about extensively as part of her broader advocacy against book banning.