Book Reviews

“I Must Betray You” by Ruta Sepetys

April 17, 2022 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

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

“Concrete Rose” by Angie Thomas

March 27, 2022 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

By the author of the bestselling novel The Hate U Give (Balzer & Bray 2017), Angie Thomas, comes a prequel, Concrete Rose (Balzer & Bray 2021). It begins with Maverick, a Black seventeen-year-old, who has pretty much everything under control. He has a fly girlfriend, Lisa, who attends a different and elite school. He’s slinging dope in Garden Hills with the support of his older cousin Dre. On the rough side, his father, the former head of the King Lord gang, is serving time in prison while his mother has taken on two jobs to support her family.

Everything is fine until Mav learns he’s the father of a three-month-old baby—and the mother isn’t his girlfriend. Mav meets the baby, ready to help with the responsibility of parenting and the teenage mother splits, abandoning the baby. Mav takes care of the child under the guidance of his magnificent mother who insists that Mav does the real parenting, while she helps where she can.

Mav takes a job at the local grocery store, trying to follow the responsible path. Lisa couldn’t be angrier at him, of course, his having made a baby while they were in a relationship. Mav is trying to do the right thing, trying to support his son, Seven, but you sure can make a lot more money slinging dope, so he returns to that, successfully hiding it from his mother. And he’s still part of the street gang. And Lisa won’t accept that.

Tragedy strikes. Dre, his cousin and mentor, is killed in the hood. As is the way of the street, Mav must seek revenge. He thinks he knows who the murderer is, but he has to be sure. In a moment of weakness and within their despair, Mav and Lisa have unprotected sex and, yep, a few months later he discovers he’s going to be a father again. No way is Lisa going to make a family with a gang member. She’s too smart for that.

Mav is a loveable guy, trying to do the right thing as a parent to Seven, is flunking out of high school, his girlfriend hardly talks to him. Things are bad. The grocery store owner has Mav working the store as well as his garden. Mav is learning about gardening—both vegetable and flower—and is trying so hard to parent. And to convince Lisa that they and the babies could be a loving family.

Having read award winning The Hate U Give (known by its acronym THUG) so long ago I didn’t know how these characters played into the original. That is to say, this book works as a stand-alone. You don’t have to have read THUG, but you’ll want to. Growing up in the hood where gangs are multigenerational, where the little ones become the young ones who become the grown ones—it’s awfully difficult to break out of the culture. And Thomas shows it so well, with so much heart. Check these books out.

“Huda F Are You?” by Huda Fahmy

March 6, 2022 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

“Huda F Are You?” by Huda Fahmy (Dial 2021) is a graphic novel “dedicated to my mom (who wants everyone to know she hates the title).” This book is funny, insightful, and heart-warming from beginning to end. It is autobiographical but not strictly an autobiography.

Huda is a hijab-wearing (hijabi) Muslim American who is having an identity crisis, as most teenagers do. At her old school her identity was the hijabi girl. The family moves to Dearborn, Michigan where many girls are “the hijabi girl.” Is she a hijabi fashionista or athlete or gamer? Well, she’s not any of those things. Who is she?

Huda has four sisters and her mother changes up the pairs by reassigning their bedrooms periodically—which all the sisters find excruciating, but Mom wants them all to bond. Huda characterizes each sister with a perfectly simple yet profound drawing and labels them, “The sporty one, the smart one (Huda), the popular girl, the mysterious one (dotted outline and a question mark for a face), the funny one. Yep! They basically birthed a girl band.” Later she has the five sisters striding over a crosswalk, a doppelganger of the Beatles “Abbey Road” album cover.

We learn a lot of Muslim culture—at least the Fahmy family’s culture. Higher education is obligatory, loans are taboo making scholarships a necessity. Expectations and pressure are high. Classmates and teachers mispronounce Huda’s name (Honda, Hydra, Hubba…) throughout the story. Insults to Muslims are rampant, “goat-lover” “boater” “’cuz you came fresh off the boat.” Sometimes the insults arrive out of ignorance, maybe, such as, “I love how hairy your hands are.” “Must be like having a cat you can pet whenever you want.” Huda says, “Yes, it is exactly like that, Yay me.”—with the picture of her face saying something quite different.

Fahmy draws Huda with little Hudas sitting on her shoulder from time to time who voice some of Huda’s opposing thoughts. Or she draws herself as a cubist Picasso when she says “I didn’t fit in at my old school . . . So why should I expect to fit in here?” A universal student quandary.

Her parents tell her, “You’re going to be a lawyer.” But what does Huda want? “I fake interest in whatever other people are talking about.” Can she base a whole personality on being smart? Getting 100s. Huda is depressed at home so her mother thinks she’s on drugs. She’s not.

Jon, a smart boy, says he likes her art. So she tells Jon she likes him. He says, I’m not your type. One teacher is clearly Islamaphobic. Her mother tries to support her at a meeting with the principal, but Huda retracts her accusations of the prejudiced teacher and breaks her mother’s heart. Picture: Huda crushing a human heart in her hand. But the principal must be insightful because suddenly the Islamaphobic teacher is giving Huda deserved As. Huda and her mother reconcile and more. Her mother is a support and “Huda F Is Gonna Be Fine.” I loved this enlightening and universal story.

“In the Wild Light” by Jeff Zentner

February 13, 2022 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

In a small Appalachian town, Cash has lost his mother to the opioid crisis. His best friend, Delaney, has a mother who appears to be losing the opioid battle. She has no concern for her daughter. But the two teens have met at a Narateen meeting and became immediate friends in Jeff Zentner’s “In the Wild Light” (Crown 2021).

Thank heavens for Cash’s grandparents, Papaw and Mamaw who love them both. Delaney is no ordinary girl. She is being pursued by the press for having discovered a mold in a cave that acts as a powerful penicillin. She credits Cash as being co-discoverer, but he knows he only paddled her into the cave in his canoe. He loves the backwoods. And he loves his grandparents. Unfortunately, Papaw has emphysema and is being kept alive with an oxygen tank. Mamaw is manager of a Caesar’s Pizza and brings home a pizza every night for their dinner. These people are living hand to mouth.

Delaney is offered a scholarship to an expensive STEM high school, Middleford, in Connecticut, but how can she go alone? It’s too intimidating. Even in Sawyer, Tennessee, she’s a misfit. This ivy league prep school would be impossible. But she gets a scholarship offer for herself and for Cash as her co-discoverer. But how can Cash leave his failing Papaw?

Papaw and Mamaw urge Cash to go to the Connecticut school, as do his aunts Betsy and Mitzi. They want a better life for their orphaned boy. He’s done fine at school in Tennessee but he knows he’s not up to ivy league standards. Delaney, however, is a genius and this is her chance. It takes a lot of chapters to get the two out of Tennessee, but the reader knows it will happen. And yep, it’s rough at Middleford, socially. Delaney excels and the teens find two empathetic friends and Cash finds poetry.

His poetry teacher, who also happens to be from Appalachia, tells him, “Every hurt, every sorrow, every scar has brought you here. Poetry lets us turn pain into fire by which to warm ourselves. Go build a fire.”

Writing poetry, which is brand new to him, helps Cash through the agonizing events of his young life and gives him a direction. As do Alex and Vi, their new friends. This is a story of sweet new love, overcoming devastating hardship, grief, and finding self and family.

“The Great Godden” by Meg Rosoff

January 23, 2022 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

The latest novel by Meg Rosoff is “The Great Godden” (Candlewick 2021) about a family and friends summering together on England’s seaside. The teenaged narrator observes acutely—the loving parents; an older beautiful sister, Mattie, who is “in love with her own life”; a younger sister, Tam, who lives at the local horse stables; younger brother, Alex, who studies bats and other wildlife; and a theatrical cousin and her fiancé next door. To this summer mix comes the Godden boys, transplanted from Los Angeles and dropped off by their failing movie star mother.

Hugo is surly and the older Kit Godden seems to Mattie to be a golden god. Our narrator says, “What annoys me most is that it takes no effort to be born beautiful, no hard work, no mental agility, no strength of character. Just dumb luck. And it’s a universal currency, often mistaken for moral superiority.” He is describing both sister Mattie and Kit.

Kit Godden first bestows his attentions on Mattie who is head over heels in love with him. Eventually Kit turns his attention and sexual prowess on the narrator who is of undisclosed gender. This confuses our teenaged narrator.

Kit says, “‘You think I’m a player.’” Our narrator says, “‘I don’t know what you are,’ I said, which was true, ‘and I don’t care.’ Which was not.” The author’s subtlety and spot-on depiction of characters is admirable, to put it lightly.

The brothers, Hugo and Kit, detest each other. In fact, Hugo rarely speaks to anyone. But eventually the narrator and Hugo develop an understanding and through him we learn a bit more about brothers’ relationship. As we discover more about Kit, we begin to appreciate Hugo more. So does our narrator, who says, “Kit’s version of natural was a carefully constructed illusion. I was learning a lot this summer, most of it stuff I didn’t want to know.”

Our narrator confronts Kit about his intentions, almost begins crying in humiliation, then says, “Part of me knew he would take advantage of a genuine emotion to advance his game, and part of me just wanted him so badly that by the time we kissed I had no thought of asking him to stop.” Anyone who feels they have been manipulated in love or in any other realm of living will admire the character/author’s insights.

Kit is getting his talons into just about everyone on the island. And still the ending is a surprise. I highly recommend you read Meg Rosoff’s books. She is perhaps the most insightful, sophisticated young adult author around. And this book is short—small and just less than 200 pages.

“Call and Response: The Story of Black Lives Matter” by Veronica Chambers with Jennifer Harlan

January 2, 2022 By Patricia Hruby Powell Leave a Comment

On July 13, 2013, Alica Garza—a young activist—was stunned when George Zimmerman was acquitted of the crime of murdering Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager. In her grief, Garza posted on FaceBook, “Black People. I love you. I love us. Our Lives Matter.” In the meantime, Opal Tometti and Patrisse Cullors—two more young Black activists—had joined voices with Garza. Cullors shared Garza’s post and added the hashtag #blacklivesmatter. The slogan caught on and the global protest movement, Black Lives Matter, was born.

Veronica Chambers with Jennifer Harlan has created a remarkable coffee table book, “Call and Response: The Story of Black Lives Matter” (Versify/HMH 2021), which outlines not only the history of a movement, but the history of our nation. The book is packed with photos, passionate text, and is a guide on how to protest injustice.

About Garza, Tometti, and Cullors, author Chambers writes “They started out as three young girls who cared deeply about their communities and about doing their part to make those communities safer, more just, and more equitable for all.” Each woman began her activism as a pre-teen and each continues to focus her work on Black Lives Matter today.

A year after Zimmerman’s acquittal in Florida, Michael Brown was murdered by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Many of us grieved deeply. All the while, awareness of the tragedy heightened. Protests bloomed nationwide under the banner, Black Lives Matter. Chambers writes, “Black Lives Matter picked up a baton that had been passed from generation to generation of Americans working, often through protest, for racial justice.” And “[a] generation of young activists emerged—finding friendship, strength, a common goal, and the first glimpse of how powerful they could be when they stood up, marched, and shared on social media what they saw and heard.”

Some individuals have joined BLM protests and become media sensation overnight. Young and old are drawn to the boots-on-the-ground experiences that protestors describe on Twitter—such as what it feels like to be tear-gassed. With the senseless murder of George Floyd in Minnesota, protests flourished across the country in June of 2020, while we were in pandemic lock down mode. We could focus on this recurring tragedy—the murder of Black people.

Art—specifically murals—as well as music—first spirituals, then blues, then protest songs—have been instrumental in drawing people together for the hard work of resistance rooted in hope. From pages 55-65 there is a valuable photographic timeline starting in 1954 with Brown vs. Board of Education and working to the present.

The grassroots BLM movement has been almost exclusively a peaceful movement—on the part of the protestors—where young participants are educated by experience. So many activists have braided their threads into the narrative of BLM—threads that began before our country was born. This book outlines the systemic racism on which our country is built.

Chambers offers examples of how to affect change, whether it’s frontline protesting, becoming street medics, suppliers, or observers. This is a must-have book if you care about justice and equality in our world.

Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning books: Lift As You Climb: The Story of Ella Baker; Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue. Books forthcoming are about women’s suffrage, Martha Graham, and Ella Fitzgerald. talesforallages.com