Book Reviews

Teenaged Harper, raised by a single mom, is a sperm donor child, in “The Epic Story of Every Living Thing” (Labyrinth Road 2022) by Deb Caletti. Harper feels incomplete, not knowing anything about her father. Her mother claims to know nothing about the sperm donor.

Obsessed by social media, Harper stages portraits of herself, that her boyfriend, Ezra, shoots—Harper sitting along the ocean, Harper jauntily walking past “cute” shops, Harper with head in the clouds. She enhances and posts the photos to her huge following.

Someone on FB tells Harper that there’s a ‘Simone’ who looks just like her. Harper finds, admires and follows the confident Simone, a year or two older, and wonders who her father is. Then she meets Dario, a year younger, on social media, who has the same auburn hair and blue eyes. Dario is a sperm donor child and he’s done the research. They all have the same father. But he hasn’t found the donor’s name, until he does—Beau Zane.

Harper and Dario search and find several Beau Zanes and narrow it to a Beau Zane who has lived near many great dive sights. This Beau Zane now lives in Hawaii. Dario tells Harper that he has found forty-two kids fathered by donor Beau. Harper is horrified.

Boyfriend Ezra is sick of being Harper’s photo lackey and to Harper’s horror, drops her. In the meantime, Dario has decided they should travel to Hawaii to find their father. He rounds up Simone and then finds another half-sibling, Wyatt, who lives in Maui and is rich. Wyatt pays for everyone’s flights and puts them up in his condo.

The four find the great Oz, or Beau Zane, at a diving school on a Maui beach. They confront the handsome wiry auburn-hair blue-eyed Beau and to his credit he’s delighted. He teaches them all to dive, free of charge. Whereas Harper is anxious about everything, she passes the four-day course and now she can dive anywhere in the world. She finds great beauty underwater.

Beau, who lives with his mother, Greer, a pot-smoking mama to all, tells them of a shipwreck out in the ocean which they think is historic and possibly that of a great-great grandparent of Beau, therefore an ancestor of the four. The Navy wants to test a bomb in the area. Of course, this will destroy the coral reef and a large section of the surrounding ocean.

They cannot convince the Navy to halt the bombing so Greer wants to stage an eco-protest against the Navy. So early in the morning of the day the Navy is to detonate the bomb the Zanes call together all their boat friends to make a blocking flotilla. In the meantime, the six protagonists find an ailing whale caught in nets so they work to free her and miss the flotilla, which successfully blocks the Navy.

If you are intrigued by sperm donor children, ecology victories, underwater scenes, or historic shipwrecks, you might like this book.

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning books: Lift As You Climb; Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore.  Books forthcoming about women’s suffrage, Martha Graham, and Ella Fitzgerald. talesforallages.com

Felix Baum, 12, from Austria-Hungary, works to resist Jewish deportation. He happens to be racing down the side street to where the carriage of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was traitorously diverted in Bosnia, and witnesses his assassination without realizing who or what he is observing. This event is thought to have begun the complex and brutal war.

Kara Webb 14, from Britain, works alongside her nurse mother on a Red Cross train in France, hoping to one day become a certified nurse or a doctor. But her empathy for wounded soldiers compels her to disobey orders, as when she hides an injured enemy soldier named Baum. When discovered, this gets her in the kind of trouble that may well keep her from ever getting the education he’ll need to fulfill her dreams. But when the Germans dispense poison gas and the number of wounded increases, Kara is ordered to the battlefield to transport the wounded to the hospital train.

French Juliette has been cut off from her mother and brother in their attempts to find her father, who has been imprisoned by the enemy during the longest battle of the war. At Verdun, Juliette sells her red cap to help raise money to find her father. Kara buys Juliette’s red cap and gives it back to the girl. This cap will make its rounds among the five teen characters.

Dimitri Petrenko, 14, a tzarist of Russia is sent to the front with no weapon by a cruel commander, who is a Bolshevik. Left for dead, Dimitri is found by Juliette who nurses him back to health in a cave where she is living. When Dimitri recovers and with Russia embroiled in its own revolution he fights on the side of the French.

Innocent Elsa from Germany whose father is a German officer, is convinced that her homing pigeon will help victims of the war.

Each of these five young people experiences the horrors, hardship, and violence of war, and their lives will connect in subtle and interesting ways. That happens, in part, by following an Austrian war medal as it passes from one to the other characters over the five years. The coincidences necessary to make this multi-character plot work, are a bit implausible, but what with Ukraine at war it could be an important read for many.

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning books: Lift As You Climb; Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore.  Books forthcoming about women’s suffrage, Martha Graham, and Ella Fitzgerald. talesforallages.com

Thirteen-year-old Ellen Katz, who is on the spectrum, is headed to Barcelona with her Georgia school classmates for a summer abroad program. So is her best-and-only-friend Laurel in “Ellen Outside the Lines” (Little Brown 2022) by A.J. Sass. Laurel has always made Ellen feel like autism is no big deal and has helped her navigate tricky social situations.

But Laurel has recently expanded her circle of friends. Ellen hopes that this trip will get their friendship back on track. Ellen’s father, Appa, is one of the chaperones on the trip and we learn much about their observant Jewish family. There’s a new kid on the trip, Isa, who identifies as they and them. That’s fine with Ellen. Isa is straightforward, confident, and kind.

The curriculum for the trip is based on a scavenger hunt, designed by their Spanish teacher, Señor L. On the flight over, Ellen asks Appa to be part of his group, which, she discovers, means that Laurel is in another team of four, a group of girls interested in make-up, shopping for clothes, and boys. Ellen still rooms with Laurel, but she’s a bit undone when she discovers her teammates are Andy, Gibs, and Isa.

Gibs tends to ask too many questions and we see how Ellen is challenged by this, and how she sorts through the questions. But she can usually slip into a bathroom stall, rock and count to sixty in Spanish and we begin to experience her autism with her.

Ellen’s teammates, except for Gibs, are diligent clue followers. As we follow them around Barcelona we see Gaudi’s architecture—especially Cathedral Sagrada Familia—the subway system, the grand boulevard Rambla and other landmarks. The bustling Rambla is a “sensory overwhelm” to Ellen, and she experiences a minor breakdown, but she knows to put on her headphones and take phone videos to be able look back on later in the quiet of their hotel. But it’s embarrassing to wear those headphones. Andy and Isa accept this immediately. They understand that Ellen is on the spectrum. With time, Gibs gets it, too.

Besides Ellen’s schoolmates, there’s an attractive Catalan brother and sister staying at the hotel. Ellen realizes she’s more attracted to the girl, Merixtelle, than Xavi, the boy. This opens her eyes to wider possibilities. Ellen and Laurel realize they’re drifting apart and make desperate attempts to right this fear, but both of them make a hash of this and the plot thickens.

Andy has a secret which Ellen naively reveals so there’s another subplot, all which adds up to a novel where you learn about autism, Barcelona, and various gender identities as Ellen expands her life. The reader is in good hands with A.J. Sass who is a fine writer and identifies as both non-binary and autistic.

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning books: Lift As You Climb; Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore.  Books forthcoming about women’s suffrage, Martha Graham, and Ella Fitzgerald. talesforallages.com

In a 1924 wealthy neighborhood of Chicago, Nathan Leopold, 19, and Richard Loeb, 18, randomly murdered Bobbie Franks, 14, to show they could execute the perfect crime. In “Murder Among Friends” (Anne Schwartz Books 2022) the award-winning nonfiction author Candace Fleming tells of the family lives of each perpetrator as well as that of the victim in Kenwood, saving the details of the crime to be woven into the description of the arrest and trial in which the renowned Clarence Darrow served as the defendants’ lawyer.

Nathan Leopold, a brilliant scholar and a misfit, earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago at the age of seventeen and was preparing to study law at Harvard University when he committed the crime. He considered himself a superman, superior to others, and therefore wasn’t restricted by rules or laws. Called “Baby” by family and close friends, he shot and stuffed songbirds throughout the city as a hobby. Nathan, a gay man living at a time when homosexuality was illegal, was in love with Richard.

Richard, also a good student, was a handsome lady’s man who also graduated early, from the University of Michigan. As a pastime he “shadowed” random people around town, delighting in his secret world. He considered himself a master criminal and convinced Nathan to commit a murder with him in exchange for sexual favors. Richard craved attention.

Their complex and supposedly air-tight murder plan involved ransom, although neither young man needed the money. But first, they had to find a victim. Bobby, from a wealthy family, a neighbor of the Leopolds and second cousin to Loeb, was walking home from school. The teens abducted him in their car, killed him, then sent a ransom note to the Franks family.

The murderers who were apprehended early on, felt no anxiety and no remorse. Richard, who wanted credit and attention for his plan, ultimately confessed. The sentence would almost certainly be hanging.

Lawyer Clarence Darrow who often defended pro bono cases was hired by the Leopold and Loeb families. Darrow had unlimited funds to call in psychiatrists at a time when practitioners were still called alienists. Psychiatry was a new science being developed by Freud Jung, and others. At the time of the trial, a criminal might be saved by a plea of insanity, but the two teenaged criminals were deemed sane.

What the brilliant Darrow wanted was ground-breaking—to show that the boys were mentally deficient, although not insane. Nine pages of primary sources cite the psychiatry records of the boys’ examiners. Here we find out more about Nathan being raised by an adoring but abusive nanny, rather than by his family. Loeb was neglected by his uber-wealthy parents. Surely a jury would convict these entitled arrogant boys. Better to convince one judge than a group of twelve. So Darrow had the boys change their not-guilty plea to guilty to avoid a trial by jury.

Gruesome as the story is, I found this meticulously researched and well-written cross over (to adult readers) to be a valuable insight into the history of law and a page turner. Check it out.

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning books: Lift As You Climb; Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore.  Books forthcoming about women’s suffrage, Martha Graham, and Ella Fitzgerald. talesforallages.com

Ruta Sepetys’s novels are young adult books that “crossover” as adult books. Such is “I Must Betray You” (Philomel 2022) set on 1989 Romania, when it existed under the totalitarian regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena.

Cristian Florescu, 17, lives with his family in Bucharest where the Communist Party has the legal right to see everything anyone owns at any time. All apartment balconies must remain empty for clear viewing by authorities. The powerful “Reporters” are the only citizens who can afford black Dacias, the only Romanian-made car. One of these Reporters lives well in every apartment building. Romanians’ houses are bugged, but where? In the light fixtures? A huge percentage of the people are informers. Even within families, you don’t know if you’re safe. So you whisper.

You live in fear. And austerity. The citizens are told that the fields are lush with crops. That turns out to be a lie. But any crops that are grown are exported to pay government debt. The Romanian people eat rough bread or gruel. Kent cigarettes are used as currency to procure illegal services, such as medicine for Bunu, Cristian’s grandfather who is dying of leukemia. The electricity is turned off randomly and frequently. Bunu says, “This never knowing, it weakens us…It’s a form of control. They know exactly what they’re doing.”

The family members take turns standing in line to buy whatever food is available—a dented, expired can of beans, a potato the size of a lime.

Cici, Cristian’s sister, says, ‘beware of your friend Luca, who is eager and asks too many questions.’ Cristian is ordered into the office of the Securiate, the brutal secret service.  They’ve framed him, said he owned American stamps. Now if he wants meds for outspoken Bunu, he’ll have to inform. But who set him up? Luca? Cristian has been in love with Luca’s sister, Liliana for ages, but maybe she’s the informer. Luca has rigged a car battery to generate light so they can all do homework. Is this suspicious? Everyone is suspicious of everyone else.

Cristian who speaks English is assigned to investigate Dan Van Dorn, son of an American diplomat. Cristian has access because his mother quietly obediently cleans the luxurious Van Dorn household. Their “refrigerator had enough food to feed a Romanian for an entire year.” Cristian watches pirated American movies and wonders if Americans really live like that.

The outside world has no idea how Romanians live. Ceaușescu has convinced world leaders of his benevolence, as he starves, imprisons, and kills his people. Secretly Romanians call him Draculescu, but in public, they must call him Our Good Father.

Cristian decides to act to change their circumstances. “How could we expect others to feel our pain or hear our cries for help when all we could do was whisper.”

When the city of Timisoara rebels against the government, Ceaușescu speaks in Bucharest’s University Square. All hell breaks loose. Rebellion! Many die but around Christmas 1989 Romania frees itself from Ceaușescu’s rule.

This well researched book set in historic Romania, which borders Ukraine, is a timely story set in an Eastern Bloc country—and a page turner.

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning books: Lift As You Climb; Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore.  Books forthcoming about women’s suffrage, Martha Graham, and Ella Fitzgerald. talesforallages.com