A mellow, keenly observed coming-of-age journey.
A preteen explores what it means to be a man during a summer on the family ranch in New Mexico in Farías’ low-key debut novel.
After his Mexican American father dies in the Vietnam War, rising seventh grader Jaime Cieza and his family face eviction. Hoping to rebuild their lives, Jaime’s Puerto Rican mom concocts a last-ditch plan: She’ll stay in New York to find a job and new home, as well as stop Jaime’s spirited older brother, Kiko, from joining the Marines. Jaime will go to Albuquerque to live with his tough-as-nails Abuela and shrewd Tío Julio, a veteran who survived Vietnam. As the summer rolls on, Jaime settles into ranch life, learning how to shoot a rifle, feed the chickens, and bond with Shadow Walker, the fierce, stubborn mustang who was his dad’s favorite horse. The days become more interesting thanks to Marcy Barnes, a white-presenting girl from a nearby ranch who’s roughly Jaime’s age. When an old wolf people call Graybeard returns to the llano, threatening the local livestock, Jaime joins his Tío Julio on the hunt, in the process finding out just how much his world has changed. Some of Abuela’s social attitudes, for example about skin tone and Indigenous beliefs, may surprise readers, who must unpack and contextualize them without explicit support from the text. Languid in pace and rich in dialogue, this strongly characterized tale of self-discovery gently dissects adolescence through the lenses of war, familial lineage, and gender roles.
A mellow, keenly observed coming-of-age journey. (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9798893750119
Page Count: 188
Publisher: Piñata Books/Arte Público
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel.
A Holocaust tale with a thin “Hansel and Gretel” veneer from the author of The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988).
Chaim and Gittel, 14-year-old twins, live with their parents in the Lodz ghetto, forced from their comfortable country home by the Nazis. The siblings are close, sharing a sign-based twin language; Chaim stutters and communicates primarily with his sister. Though slowly starving, they make the best of things with their beloved parents, although it’s more difficult once they must share their tiny flat with an unpleasant interfaith couple and their Mischling (half-Jewish) children. When the family hears of their impending “wedding invitation”—the ghetto idiom for a forthcoming order for transport—they plan a dangerous escape. Their journey is difficult, and one by one, the adults vanish. Ultimately the children end up in a fictional child labor camp, making ammunition for the German war effort. Their story effectively evokes the dehumanizing nature of unremitting silence. Nevertheless, the dense, distancing narrative (told in a third-person contemporaneous narration focused through Chaim with interspersed snippets from Gittel’s several-decades-later perspective) has several consistency problems, mostly regarding the relative religiosity of this nominally secular family. One theme seems to be frustration with those who didn’t fight back against overwhelming odds, which makes for a confusing judgment on the suffering child protagonists.
Stands out neither as a folk-tale retelling, a coming-of-age story, nor a Holocaust novel. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-25778-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Nineteenth-century tomboy Louisa Cosgrove wants to study medicine, but after her indulgent father's death, that dream seems impossibly distant. Her mother dispatches her to family friends, but Louisa never arrives. Instead, she is taken to Wildthorn Hall, an insane asylum. The staff insist her name is Lucy Childs, and her treatment ranges from the relatively benign (tranquilizers) to the horrific (sensory deprivation). The mystery of Louisa's incarceration is revealed through alternating chapters of her present and childhood: Like many of her fellow "patients," Louisa's been committed for being a troublesome woman. Luckily, her family doesn't know of those tendencies that would make her utterly irredeemable—her overly fond feelings for her beautiful cousin Grace. Unlike many of the other inmates, who seem to develop mental illness from the cruelty of their surroundings, Louisa is determined to escape, perhaps with the help of a lovely asylum employee, Eliza. Despite a too-pat ending, Louisa and Eliza provide a window into a shameful history of mental health care and women's incarceration that only ended in living memory. (Historical fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-547-37017-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2010
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