Ground Zero by Alan Gratz

Ground Zero is the story of  the past and present, of 9/11 and the U.S. war on terror in 2019 told using two narratives. In the first narrative, it is September 11, 2001 and nine-year-old Brandon Chavez has to spend the day with his dad, Leo Chavez at the World Trade Center.  Brandon's father is a kitchen manager at the restaurant, Windows on the World, located at the very top of the North Tower, on the 107th floor.

Brandon and his father are a team, working together to survive, after the death of Brandon's mother from cancer, when he was only five years old. Getting into a fight at school was definitely not good for their team as Brandon was suspended. His father reminds him that fighting is not the way to deal with problems.

In the restaurant, Brandon is put to work filling flower vases on tables. When a fire breaks out in the kitchen, Brandon uses the distraction to slip into the elevator. His plan is to get to the underground mall to buy the Wolverine gloves his friend Cedric lost in the fight at school.

Brandon is in the elevator that only goes to the Sky Lobby on the 78th floor. After several people get on, the elevator begins swaying back and forth after a tremendous THOOM. Then the elevator begins sliding down and only stops when Brandon manages to hit the emergency stop button. When they call the emergency phone they learn that there was some kind of explosion on the 91st floor.

Black smoke begins creeping through the seems in the ceiling and the elevator begins getting very hot. Cellphones don't work. Brandon and the people trapped in the elevator struggle to free themselves by first forcing open the doors of the elevator and then chipping a hole through three layers of drywall.

Brandon manages to squeeze through the hole and onto the 85th floor where he runs to find help. With the help of some men from the bank, and a fireman's axe, they manage to break open a larger hole and rescue everyone from the elevator before it plummets down the shaft. When Marni, who was trapped in the elevator calls her husband she learns that a passenger jet has flown into the tower. While the rescued people decide to climb down 85 flights of stairs, Brandon decides to  head back upstairs to find his father. But Brandon has no idea of how catastrophic the damage is to the North Tower. Can he save himself and his father?

Alternating with Brandon's story is that of Reshmina, a young girl living with her family in a rural village in Afghanistan.  Her village is built into the mountainside with the houses stacked on top of each other. A long set of  switchback stairs cut into the rock offer the only way to reach her home. Eleven-year-old Reshmina lives with her parents, her anaa- grandmother, her older sister Marzia, her brother Pasoon and her little brother Zahir. Reshmina's eldest sister, Hila was killed when her wedding party was attacked by American's believing them to be Taliban.

Reshmina and Pasoon climb the rock stairs to their house, watching as the ANA and Americans search house to house. Pasoon is furious to see the Afghans taking orders from the Americans. Soon the soldiers are at Reshmina's home. A short, broad-shouldered American soldier tells them in English that they are not here to hurt them. Reshmina is thrilled to discovered she can understand him. Unlike Pasoon, she has continued with her English lessons at school. She's even more amazed to encounter an Afghan woman working as a translator for the Americans. None of the women Reshmina knows work outside the home: they are all wives, mothers, and daughters. The translator tells them that the Americans have been told there is a cache of Taliban weapons in the village.

Outside their home, the American soldier tells Baba, Pasoon and Reshmina they need to keep the Taliban out of their village. This makes both Reshmina and Pasoon angry as cooperating with either the Taliban or the Americans brings problems.

When Reshmina attempts to follow the group of soldiers so she can watch the Afghan translator, Pasoon tells her she can't and reveals that the Americans have been lured to their village as a trap by the Taliban. They plan to attack the Americans as they leave the village. Reshmina is shocked at the betrayal and what it means. But before she can tell anyone, the Taliban attack happens.

After the attack, Reshmina encounters a badly wounded American soldier, his face scorched and his eyes blinded. If he is found by the Taliban, they will kill him. Reshmina wants to slip away, but when he asks for help in English which she understands, she knows she cannot refuse. 

At her home, Reshmina's baba agrees to take in the wounded American. Reshmina realises that the soldier has the same small stuffed toy attached to his vest as the American soldier who searched their home only a few minutes earlier. He tells them his name is Taz, after the small stuffed Tasmanian Devil toy on his vest.

Reshmina's mother is horrified to see the soldier in her house. When Pasoon returns he is overjoyed at the success of the attack which killed everyone including the woman Afghan translator, Miriam. But when he sees the wounded American soldier, he is furious and determined to inform the Taliban. While Pasoon runs off, Baba assures Taz they will not let the Taliban take him.

Because Taz needs medical treatment at a hospital, Reshmina's father decides to travel to the ANA base, five kilometers away to let them know about Taz. But Reshmina knows she has to find Pasoon and stop him from joining the Taliban and telling them about Taz. If he tells them about their family hiding the American soldier, they and their village will be punished by the Taliban. Can Reshmina save Pasoon, Taz and their family

Discussion

Ground Zero is a fictional story about the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 and the ongoing American involvement in Afghanistan as a result of the terrorist attacks almost two decades ago. It is a story about how revenge leads to more war and loss, and how choosing a different path, that of working together makes for a better world.

Gratz connects the past event of 9/11 with the ongoing current events in Afghanistan through the use of alternating storylines. Nine-year-old Brandon Chavez finds himself in the North Tower, his father trapped at the very top, while he struggles to get to safety. Eighteen years later, eleven-year-old Reshmina struggles to prevent her brother from joining the Taliban and save her family from a retaliatory strike by American forces after a Taliban attack leaves an American soldier badly wounded. 

 Gratz aligns similar events in each narrative perhaps to demonstrate that war and violent acts have a particular economy - they play out much the same regardless of the country or the people or the cause, with death and destruction and often with many innocent victims.For example, when Brandon is buried in the rubble of the fallen tower, in the following chapter, Reshmina and her family and village are buried alive in the cave after an attack by the Americans. Brandon escapes to see the towers destroyed while Reshmina survives to see her entire village crumbling down the mountainside.

The novel also highlights how the innocent victims often have no understanding of the events they find themselves caught up in. While he's making his way down the stairs of the North Tower, Brandon is told about the 1993 bombing of the tower by terrorist who wanted the U.S. out of the Middle East. He wonders who is attacking them. "Brandon still didn't understand. What purpose did attacking the Twin Towers serve? Hurting all these innocent people." Eighteen years later, Reshmina also has no understanding of the war between the Taliban and the Americans nor of the 9/ll attacks. The pictures Taz shows her of the Twin Towers burning mean nothing to her, her parents, grandparents or the other elderly villagers. But the fear and loss Brandon experienced during the events of 9/11 are the same fear and loss that Reshmina experiences years later as the American soldiers fight the Taliban.

Reshmina's situation reminds Brandon of the lesson he learned that day years ago after surviving the 9/11 attack. Before the attack Brandon viewed his father and himself as being "against the world". But that changed. "It isn't me against the world, Brandon realized. It's everyone working together. And not against the world either, but for each other. That was how they survived." Reshmina reminds Taz that the U.S. needs to stop doing the kind of "helping" they are doing. "You can't help us by rebuilding villages and destroying them at the same time. " 

Ground Zero, published in time for the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, is a thoughtful treatment of the terrorist attacks and the War on Terror. Gratz is able to show the human cost while advocating through the character of Reshmina (and Taz ) for another path. At the end of the novel, Reshmina spots her brother Pasoon who waves to her, but she doesn't return his wave. Instead, she tells her baba they will choose another path - not only down the mountain but also a path different from the one Pasoon has chosen, which will only lead to more death and destruction.

Ground Zero is a thrilling read, with lots of tense moments. Well-written, this is another excellent novel for young readers by this outstanding author. Gratz is able to impart some of the history about the Twin Towers attacks through various characters and about Afghanistan through the character of Reshmina's grandmother who grew up in Kabul before the Soviet invasion. In this way, young readers become informed about these events and can consider current policies and actions within some context. The author has included significant resources at the back of the novel including a map of the World Trade Center and Afghanistan as well as a detailed Author's Note explaining the 9/11 attacks as well as the war in Afghanistan and America's current involvement.

Book Details:

Ground Zero by Alan Gratz
New York: Scholastic Press   2021
304 pp.

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Brown Girl Dreaming is the story of Jacqueline Woodson's life growing up as an African American in America during the 1960s and 1970s. Woodson is an award-winning American author who has written many children's books.

In Part I "I am born", Woodson writes about her family history, on her father and mother's side. To aid her readers, Woodson provides family trees of her father Jack Woodson's family and her mother, Mary Ann Irby's family.

Woodson was born February 12, 1963 in Columbus, Ohio, into a nation in which the black civil rights movement was blossoming. The 1960s was a time of great change and agitation in the United States. The civil rights movement and the anti-war movement were just beginning to gain traction in 1963.

Her great-great-grandparents were slaves working the land. Although her parents, Jack and Mary were born free, in many ways they still did not have the freedoms that most white American's take for granted. And so, throughout America, African-Americans from all walks of life, led by Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X and Rosa Parks are standing up for their civil rights, each in their own way.

Woodson writes that her father's family can be traced back to Thomas Woodson of Chillicothe, who was the first son of Thomas Jefferson and his black slave, Sally Hemings. Her paternal great-great-grandfather, William J. Woodson, born free in Ohio, fought in the Civil War for the Union. His son, William Woodson was sent to Nelsonville, Ohio to be educated in an all-white school. In a family of doctors and lawyers, Woodson's father Jack, earned a football scholarship to Ohio State University and settled in Columbus Ohio.

After her parents married, three children followed: a boy named Hope, a girl named Odella and then Jacqueline. Every year in the fall, Woodson's mother along with her children take the bus south to Woodson's mother's parents in South Carolina, leaving behind her father in Ohio Her father is determined to never return to the south because of the way African Americans are treated there. But in May of 1964, her father travels to South Carolina to reconcile with her mother and together the family return to Ohio. However, when Woodson is a year old, her mother decides to South Carolina for good, taking the children with her and leaving Woodson's father behind.

Part II "The stories of South Carolina run like rivers" focuses on Woodson's life in South Carolina at the home of her maternal grandparents, Gunnar and Georgiana Irby. Her grandfather Gunnar becomes "Daddy" to the three Woodson children,. He works as a foreman at a printing press while her grandmother teaches part-time and does what is called daywork which is cleaning the homes of white folk. In South Carolina, life is full of stories. Woodson with her sister Dell and her brother Hope sit on the porch stairs in the evening, listening to the women tell stories about relatives, the people in the daywork houses and neighbours. There is also her grandfather's garden, the smell of wood burning in the pot-bellied stove in autumn and fire flies in mason jars.

Woodson's mother leaves for New York City but returns before the summer with a plan to eventually move her family there. Woodson and her siblings find themselves pulled into their grandmother's faith as a Jehovah Witness, attending meetings at the local Kingdom Hall and going out to neighbours to share their faith. Woodson's mother returns to New York City but the following year she is back in Greenville, bringing a new baby brother, Roman. They move to New York City to start a new life.

Part III "Followed the sky's mirrored constellation to Freedom" describes Woodson's move to New York city. Woodson along with her mother, brother Hope and sister Odella and the new baby Roman, move to Herzl Street where her Aunt Kay and Bernie live. They then move to a house on Madison Avenue. For Woodson, New York is much different and she missed
"the collards growing
down south, the melons, fresh picked
and dripping with a sweetness New York
can never know."
But Woodson loves her school with its warm wood trim but life in New York takes some getting used to. Tragedy strikes when her half-brother Roman eats paint off the walls and becomes sick from lead poisoning. When the family returns to Greenville for the summer, Roman has to stay behind in the hospital to recover.

Part IV "Deep in my heart, I do believe" is a collection of poems about Woodson's life in New York City. By this time, Woodson is beginning to adjust to life in the big city. She has a good friend, Maria with whom she shares her lunches. She is considered family by Maria who invites her to her brother Carlos' baptism. Her beloved Uncle Robert is sent to jail on Rikers Island. It is during this time that Woodson begins to write - small poems which she finds are easier to express herself . 

Part V "Ready to change the world" touches on the tumultuous times of the late 1960s and Woodson's experiences in school during this era. She found her calling gradually, her voice, and her place as a writer.

Discussion

Brown Girl Dreaming is about a young African American girl's journey to finding her place in a  changing America. Woodson takes young readers through her own journey by first setting the stage of the America her family came from; black Americans, one side freeborn, the other side only two generations from slavery. The Civil War victory for the Union was supposed to given African Americans their freedom but in the south things have been slow to change. It is this situation that seems to divide Woodson's parents. Her mother's love of Nicholtown in Greenville, South Carolina draws her back to the south. Her father on the other hand, is determined to leave the south,

 "You can keep your South,...
The way they treated us down there,
I got your mama out as quick as I could.
Brought her right up here to Ohio."

Woodson describes growing up in a loving family, her early years wrapped in the love of her beloved grandfather Gunnar and her grandmother.  As her mother moves her family from Greenville to various locations in New York City, Woodson is shaped by the events happening throughout the nation; the marchers in the south, Angela Davis and the Black Panther movement in California, and the Vietnam War.

Jacqueline Woodson gradually discovers that words hold a special meaning for her and that she wants to be a writer. Her storytelling begins with her own stories that she tells, which her Uncle Robert enjoys and encourages, but which her mother accuses her of lying, warning her that she will one day steal.
"I won't steal.
It's hard to understand how one leads to the other,
how stories could ever
make us criminals."

Storytelling is easier at first for Woodson as she explains in the poem, "writing #1"
"It's easier to make up stories
than it is to write them down. When I speak,
the words come pouring out of me. The story
wakes up and walks all over the room...."

In the poem "birch tree poem" Woodson captures what poetry and words mean to her, how poems open her imagination in a way that brings tears to her eyes. When she tells her family that she wants to be a writer, they acknowledge her love of writing and its benefits as a hobby, but suggest she should consider something else...a teacher, a lawyer.

When Woodson's quiet, older brother Hope shocks everyone including his family with his wonderful voice at a school concert, she wonders,
"Maybe, I am thinking, there is something hidden
like this, in all of us. A small gift from the universe
waiting to be discovered."

Woodson love of stories is shown when she memorizes the story of the Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde and recites it to her classmates, enthralling them,
"But I just shrug, not knowing what to say.
How can I explain to anyone that stories
are like air to me,
I breathe them in and let them out
over and over again."
After this she knows that "Words are my brilliance."

After this she writes a book of poems about butterflies, and another time whispers a song she thinks up on the bus to Dannemora to visit her Uncle Robert. Her sister believes it's "too good" to have been thought up by Jacqueline. But she's now beginning to find where she belongs, what her "small gift" might be.

Brown Girl Dreaming is about finding your own niche, learning to accept yourself and finding that hidden "small gift" that everyone has. It's about believing in yourself and having the courage to follow where your "small gift" might lead you! For Woodson, words are her gift, everlasting,

"...on paper, things can live forever 
On paper, a butterfly
never dies."

Well-written, Brown Girl Dreaming captures the essence of coming of age as an African-American in America during the 1960s and 70s.

Book Details:

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
New York: Puffin Books     2016
348 pp.

Interlude by Chantele Sedgwick

Interlude is a classic story of a boy and a girl thrown together unexpectedly, each struggling with their own problems, who fall in love. The novel opens with eighteen-year-old Mia Cox in her doctor's office. She's there to get tested to determine if she's a compatible match so she can donate a kidney to her younger sister Madison (Maddy). Dr. Mason discusses the risks of donating a kidney and tells Mia that she will know in two weeks.

Weeks later, Mia takes Maddy to her dialysis treatment which she undergoes three times per week. Mia is very worried about her sister who is tired and withdrawn. She is in the final stages of kidney disease which is renal failure.
At dinner that night, Mia gets a call from the doctor's office informing her that she is not a match and therefore not suitable to donate a kidney to Maddy. Mia retreats to her bedroom, completely distraught but also determined. She pulls out an old birthday card sent by her birth mother, Carmen Santalina from fifteen years earlier. Mia and Maddy's mother Carmen, abandoned them when Mia was three years old. Her father moved to from New York to California where he remarried.

With a plan formulating in her head, Mia questions her father as to whether Carmen still lives in New York City. However, he will only tell her that Carmen won't care, even when Mia begs him to at least call her and tell her about Maddy's illness. Furious at her father's refusal, Mia googles Carmen's name to locate her in New York. She is interrupted by Maddy who come to her bedroom and then collapses. Mia screams for her father, the paramedics are called, and Maddy is rushed to hospital.

At the hospital, Maddy is stabilized but weak and she confides to Mia that she knows she's going to die, that a donor will not be found in time. Mia tries to encourage Maddy, who believes it is too late for her. Determined to save her sister Mia goes home, packs a backpack, writes her father a note, and drives to the airport where she books herself onto a flight to New York City. Her hope is to find their birth mother and convince her to donate a kidney to Maddy.

On the flight, a guy about Mia's age, with dark hair and an eyebrow piercing, is seated next to her. He is slouched down in the seat, not talkative, his earbuds in, listening to music. Part way through the flight, Mia notices the distinctive tattoo on his arm. When he picks up an entertainment magazine, Mai mutters about not liking the band Blue Fire and its lead singer, Jaxton Scott featured on the cover. Mia's remark is overheard by him and he questions her as to why she doesn't like them. Mia tells him she believes they have no talent, their image is creepy with the makeup, black nail polish and piercings, and that they are "fakers". The conversation makes Mia curious about the article on Blue Fire. As she's reading it, a closer look at the picture of Jaxton Scott leads Mia to recognize the tattoo on his arm as the same as the one on the man seated next to her. To her embarrassment,  Mia realizes she's sitting next to Jaxton Scott.

Mia tries to apologize, but Jaxton insists he's not offended and appreciates her honesty. Jaxton tells Mia that he is "taking a spontaneous vacation to New York. Indefinitely."  He has no gig, no girlfriend, no bodyguards or groupies. When Jaxton questions Mia about her trip, at first she is reluctant to tell him her reason for flying to the city, only that she is sightseeing. However, Jaxton can sense that Mia is not telling him the truth and that she's running from something. He reassures her that everything she reads about him is fake, that it is all show.

Mia tells Jaxton about her sister's terminal illness and that her trip to New York is to locate their birth mother who is the only other person likely to be a match. Jaxton tells Mia he is "The screw-up who's running away from  his life." He tells her that his band formed in high school and by their junior year, they had a record contract. On tour he managed to finish his senior year of high school, but there were also parties, tours and playing huge venues. Jaxton insists all he wants to do is write music. When Mia questions him as to why he's doing this if it's not what he wants, he tells her it is difficult to get out of contracts, so this trip is a break to try to figure things out by returning home to his family on Long Island.

After a lay over in Denver, Mia and Jaxton board their flight to New York. Jaxton arranges for Mia to sit next to him, and invites her to really listen to his music. When it becomes apparent that Mia has no where to stay and that she has no idea how to locate her birth mother, Jaxton insists on helping her. But Mia is reluctant to accept Jaxton's help because she really doesn't know him, so to remedy this, he spends some time telling Mia more about himself in the hopes she will feel safer. As their flight nears its destination, Jaxton offers to put Mia up in a hotel overlooking Central Park. Mia balks at this because she cannot afford it but Jaxton insists. As they spend time together, Mia knows she has to stay focused on finding her birth mother and helping save Maddy, even as her attachment to Jaxton grows.

Discussion

Although Sedgwick's novel, Interlude is a predictable YA romance, it is both enjoyable and sweet, with the added bonus of a happy ending. Mia and Jaxton, from very different worlds, each dealing with very serious life problems, are inadvertently thrown together and fall in love. Jaxton has the image of a bad boy rocker in contrast to Mia's clean girl image. While Mia seems to have her life together and knows what she wants, Jaxton is struggling to deal with his rock star lifestyle.  Their time together is seen as an "interlude" in their lives.

The story is told from the point of view of Mia who astutely identifies the situation both she and Jaxton are in. "We're two people running from different things in our lives. One of us is running to save another, the other is running to save himself." Both Jaxton and Mia love music: Jaxton is a song writer and lead singer in a rock band, while Mia is an accomplished pianist. While talking on the plane about music, Jaxton mentions that he loves preludes which he describes as "...the most important part of the song, I think. It has to be distinct. Different  than everything else out there. It's like the hook. Or the tease before the masterpiece, if you will."  But Mia loves the interlude which she sees as the solo in the middle of a song, that gives a break from the lyrics. Their time spent on the plane is the interlude for both Jax and Mia, a time away from the stresses of their lives, where they can just be themselves and not deal with their worries. It is the break for Jax from his rock star life and for Mia it is a break from the worry about finding a donor for Maddy and her illness.

The themes of sisterhood and family can be found throughout the novel. Mia is devoted to her sister as evidenced by her willingness to take her sister Maddy to her dialysis treatments and to stay with her for the three hours it takes to clean her blood. Mia is determined to save her. She is willing to donate a kidney to her sister but when that becomes impossible, Mia impulsively and in desperation, decides to travel across the continent to find their estranged biological mother. Although this isn't successful in the way Mia planned, it does work out in the end.

Sedgwick's story stresses the importance of family. Jax tells Mia, "I talk to my mom at least once a week. My sister Jeigh, usually every day. We've always been really close. I have another sister, but she's a bit younger, so I don't hear from her as much. I love hanging out with her when I go home, though."  For Mia, despite being abandoned by her birth mother at age three, she is very close to her father and her stepmother, Trista. "I can't imagine living my life without Trista. She's been a wonderful mother to me."  Because Mia has such a strong sense of family with her father, Trista and Maddy, she is stung by her birth mother Carmen's complete rejection of herself and Maddy being "family". Carmen tells Mia that Maddy is not her daughter. "I might have been a mother to you once, and I'm sorry for all the pain I caused you, but I was never a mother to Madison. I held her once...She's a stranger to me and she has no recollection of me either. I don't owe her anything." Fortunately for Maddy, Carmen's sister, Ana does not feel this way and decides to undergo testing to see if she is a possible donor.

Sedgwick admits she had to do considerable research into kidney disease and organ donation. Live donor organ donation is somewhat controversial because of the risks to the donor. However, live donor kidney donation is the most common and the most successful of all transplants. Interlude is a light, enjoyable read, with well developed and interesting characters. Suitable for ages 13 to 18.

Book Details:

Interlude by Chantele Sedgwick
New York: Sky Pony Press    2018
275 pp.

The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer Smith

One September day before the start of school, the power in New York City and throughout the eastern seaboard of the United States goes out. Moments before, Lucy Patterson had just made the elevator, pushing the door open to rush inside. When the elevator comes to a grinding halt, Lucy and the new boy, who'd only moved into the basement apartment a month ago with his father, the new superintendent, are left completely in the dark. They do not know how extensive the blackout is, believing it is only a problem in their building.

As they wait to be rescued, Lucy learns the boy's name is Owen Buckley and that he's not taken a liking to New York. Owen and his father moved to New York after the death of his mother. Her death made living in their home in Pennsylvania too painful and after being out of work for a year, as a contractor, Owen's father was given a job as the building superintendent in New York.

Both teens are on their own; Owen's father has gone out to Brooklyn on a personal errand and Lucy's parents are away in London, England. Lucy and Owen bide their time in the dark elevator, talking about life in New York City and how they view the city in a different way, she a native New Yorker, he a newcomer.

Eventually, they are rescued from the elevator, only to discover that the entire city and seaboard is without power. Initially, Owen and Lucy go their separate ways but Owen reconsiders and follows her up to her apartment, 24D. They get a flashlight and go down to the street to find water and ice cream. Since Owen has a key to the roof of their building, he and Lucy decide to spend the night up there. Owen learns that Lucy is often left alone by her parents who seem to be always traveling to "amazing places". Her father works for a British bank and they travel frequently. They always send Lucy a postcard from whatever city they are visiting.  Owen notes that Lucy seems sad about her parent's absence and they joke about how postcards always say "Wish you were here." when really if people did feel that way, they would have invited the person along. They spend the night talking about family, travel and life in general.

When morning comes, Lucy finds herself alone on the roof. Owen meanwhile has gone back to the apartment worried about his father, who was stuck in Brooklyn the previous day.  He finds his father in the apartment lobby suffering from heat exhaustion after having walked all the way home and spends the next day taking care of him. Because of his father's absence, the apartment building which is owned by his father's second cousin, Sam Coleman, was not taken care of properly during the blackout. Coleman warns Owen that if his father doesn't do his job he will lose it. Which is exactly what happens. As a result, Owen and his father set out on a journey that takes them across America. His father is in search of both a job and an escape from the memories of his wife.

Lucy searches for Owen but doesn't find him. When the blackout ends, her parents contact her and book her a flight to London. When she arrives, Lucy learns that her father is trying for a job at a bank in London and that they will not be moving back to New York. While in London, Lucy sends Owen a postcard with "Wishing You Were Here" embossed on the front and writing "I actually do." on the back. Owen in New York, also sends Lucy the same kind of postcard with the same message.

A few weeks later they both meet up unexpectedly in New York. Both Lucy and Owen reveal to one another that they will be leaving New York City - Lucy to London, and Owen to wherever his father can find a new job. Although they promise to keep in touch via postcards, Owen and Lucy must decide whether their relationship is something that will survive the turmoil of the next year.

The Geography of You and Me chronicles Lucy and Owen's attempts to continue their relationship against the backdrop of the enormous changes both of their families experience throughout the coming year. Readers will love the romantic tension Jennifer Smith creates throughout the novel and the somewhat inconclusive but realistic ending. It would be interesting to meet Lucy and Owen five years into the future to see how their lives and their relationship have unfolded.

Smith tells Owen and Lucy's stories in alternating narratives, which often include parallel actions and thoughts in both characters lives even though they are separated by geography and time. This tends to lend a sense of destiny to their relationship which is rather endearing and romantic.Owen's narrative focuses on how he and his father try to come to terms with the loss of their mother/wife. I wondered how realistic it was for Owen to have missed most of his senior year yet still be able to graduate and get accepted at six colleges. Lucy's narrative deals more with her life changing from that of an outsider in New York, to finding her niche in a new place. "In New York, she'd stood apart, and in Edinburgh, she'd stood out; but here, she just stood alongside everyone else, and there was comfort in that, in fitting in for once."

If this novel has one weakness, it's that Smith fails to convey to her readers the chemistry that Lucy and Owen seem to feel towards each other. Their initial meeting doesn't really provide readers with an understanding of why these two people are attracted to each other - other than maybe both are lonely. After their third disastrous meeting, it seems like all is over. Yet something in both Owen and Lucy leads them to break off with their current partner, in the hope of rediscovering what attracts them to one another. Unfortunately, it's all a bit of a mystery that is never quite revealed to the reader and that even the characters themselves don't quite understand. Perhaps that is what is so baffling about love.

Those who enjoy a light, contemporary romance will want to read The Geography of You and Me. Jennifer E. Smith has a masters in creative writing and is the author of several popular young adult novels including This Is What Happy Looks Like.

Book Details:
The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer Smith
New York: Little, Brown and Company    2014
337 pp.

Bunheads by Sophie Flack

Sophie Flack's debut novel, Bunheads tells the story of nineteen year old Hannah Ward, a member of the corps du ballet in the prestigious Manhattan Ballet company and her internal struggle to determine the direction of her life.

Hannah, who always wanted to be a ballet dancer, left home at age fourteen to train at the company's school and is now a senior corps member, performing three to four ballets in an evening. Other members of the corps include Beatrice (Bea)Hall, Daisy, and the highly competitive, Zoe Mortimer. Otto Klein, the director of the Manhattan Ballet, is the one who chooses the ballets the company will perform and who will dance the solos. Each dancer in the corps du ballet dreams of promotion, working hard to attain this goal, often at great personal sacrifice.

One evening after being selected to understudy a solo part, Hannah decides to have dinner at her cousin, Eugene's West Village restaurant. There she meets Jacob, an NYU student who is still struggling to find his groove in life and who is also a singer at the restaurant. As her on-again, off-again relationship with Jacob develops, Hannah begins to reconsider her life and her goals. Jacob has opened her eyes to the world outside of ballet.

At the same time Hannah is also being pursued by a handsome wealthy balletomone, Matt Fitzgerald, whose jet-set lifestyle intrigues her. While Matt opens Hannah's eyes to the lifestyle of the rich and famous that ballet dancers sometimes step into, Jacob is more down to earth and relevant to Hannah's background and life.

But Hannah faces a difficult choice; to put everything into dance. "Don't think, just dance." or to step outside the only world she has known to do some of the things she as an adult would now like to do.

Discussion

Bunheads is definitely one of the better teen reads for 2011.This novel succeeds because the author knows her subject. The majority of readers will not have any concept of what it is like to be a ballet dancer in a major company; the long exhausting hours of practice, the pain endured in pushing the body to its limits, the exhilaration of performing on stage and obtaining the recognition so dearly desired, the complex relationships that exist within a major dance company and the difficulty of having any semblance of a normal life outside of training and performing. But Sophie Flack is able to take the reader into that world, fill it out and make it real and comprehensible to her readers.

Hannah is a believable character who struggles to discover just what it is she wants for her life; the insular world of ballet or to discover more about the world around her. Despite her driven, high-achieving nature, when Hannah begins to see the cost of success in the world of ballet, she begins to rethink her priorities and her goals.

Bunheads is a nice change from the usual young adult fare and will appeal to those teens who are involved in the arts world, especially the world of dance. It gives them the opportunity to both the positive and negative aspects of a dance career. The novel touches on issues prevalent in the ballet world; dieting and anorexia, injuries and the social world of ballet.

Book Details:
Bunheads by Sophie Flack
New York: Little, Brown and Company 2011
294pp.

Ashes of Roses by Mary Jane Auch

Ashes of Roses opens February 18, 1911 as Margaret Rose (Rose) Nolan along with her Ma, Da, sisters, twelve-year-old Maureen Rose and four-year-old Bridget, and her baby brother Joseph, arrive in New York harbour. They have just finished a two week journey, as steerage passengers from Cork, Ireland. 

As steerage passengers they have to disembark and the ferry to Ellis Island where they are to be examined by immigration officials. They all pass the physical and eye examination except Joseph who is diagnosed with trachoma, a contagious eye infection. This means that he cannot enter America and must return to Ireland. Since the Nolans do not have enough money for the entire family to return, Da makes the decision that he will return with Joseph and Ma and the girls will go on to stay with his brother Patrick as they planned. Da will work to earn the money to return and if Joseph's eyes are clear he will bring him to America. If not he will stay in Ireland. This decision deeply upsets Ma who doesn't want to abandon her baby and who feels they should all return to Ireland. 

Heartbroken Ma and the girls move into another area and after questioning by another examiner they are sent to the pier to meet Uncle Patrick. When Ma sees that Patrick is not there, she sneaks in behind a man and his family, pretending they are relatives. Without Patrick, they will be sent back to Ireland. While Ma doesn't know why Patrick isn't there, she has his address and intends to find him. 

After help from several policemen who are also from Ireland, Ma and the girls find Patrick's apartment and discover that he has a wife named Elsa. Living with Patrick and Elsa are her two daughters, Trudy and Hildegard, and Patrick and Elsa's son, Frederich. They learn that Patrick did not know they were coming as he never received Da's letter. While Patrick is welcoming and is happy to have them stay with his family, Elsa and her daughters are not. Patrick has done well for himself, having come to America with twenty dollars, worked on the docks before getting into politics and now a councilman for the Seventeenth Ward. His home has five rooms: a parlor, diningroom, kitchen, two bedrooms, and a bathroom with hot running water and an indoor toilet. After a strange dinner of saurekraut and black rye bread, and a bath, Rose and her family settle in. 

On Sunday Ma is shocked to discover that Patrick and his family do not attend Catholic Mass, but instead the Lutheran church. Furious, she leaves the apartment and takes the girls to Mass. As the week goes on, it becomes more and more difficult for Rose, Ma and Maureen to live at Patrick's home. They are clearly resented by Elsa and her daughters. Rose overhears Elsa attempting to convince Patrick to make them leave. This leads Rose to decide to try to find work. She manages to find piece work with a man named Mr. Moscovitz who allows Rose to take home the pieces to make paper flower stems. However this leads to a violent showdown between Elsa and her daughters and Ma and Maureen. 

As a result Patrick tells Ma they must stay elsewhere and offers to pay for a place until his brother Michael returns to New York. But Ma decides she has had enough and will return to Limerick. Patrick purchases tickets in second class for the family and on Saturday morning, two weeks after arriving they leave. However, when they are at the pier, Rose refuses to leave America. She believes there are more opportunities for her in America than back in Limerick where she most likely get married. When Ma agrees to Rose staying, Maureen also wants to stay. Ma eventually agrees, gives Rose and Maureen their tickets to cash back in and boards the boat with Bridget. 

In New York City Rose and Maureen manage to find lodging with a man, Mr. Garoff and his daughter Gussela who is a seamstress at a shirtwaist factory on Washington Street. Gussie is also a prominent union organizer and is involved with the Waistmakers Local 25. Over the weekend Rose and Maureen struggle to finish the paper flower stems for Mr. Muscovitz. When Rose takes them back to Mr. Muscovitz he begins sorting through them but when she begs him to pay her, he tells her to come back later that night. This turns out to be a trick where he attempts to assault Rose, but she manages to escape. Rose tells Gussie what happened and she informs Rose that they will return in the morning to retrieve her coat and demand payment for the work she completed. Gussie comes up with an alternate plan for Rose: she will get a sewing machine for Rose to practice on and when she learns how to use it, Gussie will speak with the foreman at the shirtwaist factory. 

Within a week Rose learns how to run the sewing machine and Gussie takes her to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory where she is given a job. Rose takes her first-ever ride in an elevator and soon becomes comfortable working in the factory. She makes friends with two girls who work opposite her,  Rose Klein, and Rose Bellini. As she begins to learn the job at the factory, Rose also forms a strong bond with the two girls. But just as their life is seeming to become settled, tragedy strikes.

At the end of the workday on a Saturday, fire breaks out on the floor below.  Rose finds herself trapped on the ninth floor along with Gussie and her friends Rose Klein and Rose Bellini. With the doors locked and the lone elevator capable of only holding a small number of people, there are few choices to escape the inferno. Rose, her two friends and Gussie each make decisions that determine whether they will live or die.

Discussion

1911 markes the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, a tragedy that forever changed the face of factory work in the United States and other countries.  Ashes of Roses is a historical fiction novel that portrays the tragedy from the perspective of a young Irish immigrant.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire occurred on Saturday March 25, 1911 in the garment factory that was located on the eighth throught tenth floors of the Asch building in the Greenwich Village neighbourhood. The factory, which was owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, employed around five hundred immigrant women and girls, some as young as fifteen,  in the making of shirtwaists, a fashionable women's blouse worn at the turn of the last century. Immigrant women and some men were hired because they would work for lower wages and were less likely to unionize. At this time, there were few protections for workers, and up to one hundred workers died every day on the job in 1911. At the Triangle Shirtwaist factory women had to leave the building to use the washroom as there were no facilities on site. Management began locking the exit doors to prevent the resulting work stoppage. They claimed it was to prevent theft. Shirtwaist workers worked nonstop, seven days a week for a mere six dollars a week.

The fire started near the end of the workday on Saturday in a scrap bin on the eighth floor, possibly from a discarded match or cigarette. The wooden scrap bin contained several months worth of material scraps from the cutters table above it. There was no fire alarm in the building and the factory floors with its abundance of flammable material was quickly engulfed in flames. The floors had doors, two freight elevators, two stairways, and a fire escape.  However, the door to the Washington Place stairway was locked to prevent thefts, the Greene Street stairway quickly became engulfed in the raging flames, and the two freight elevators managed to save some but were soon inoperable due to the heat.  To escape the raging fire some employees crammed onto the rickety fire escape which collapsed sending people to their deaths. The firefighter's ladders only reached to the seventh floor and so to escape, some began jumping from the windows to escape the smoke and flames. The fire was over in a half hour. Of the five hundred employees, one hundred forty-six were dead, most of them young women.  The fire would become a turning point in the fight for workers rights, leading to many changes.

Historical fiction succeeds if the author is able to portray the period accurately through the setting and the characters. Author Mary Jane Auch suceeds in Ashes of Roses with her incorporation of historical detail and her crafting of believable characters. The author became interested in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire after watching the PBS documentary, New York. Auch writes in her Author's Note that she initially believed the workers in the factory were mainly Irish but soon discovered that was not the case. Although most of the workers in the factory were Russian, Polish, and Italian, she did find the name of an Irish woman and decided to continue with the main character as a young Irish immigrant. 

Auch offers readers an interesting portrayal of life in early twentieth century New York City: a bustling metropolis with immigrants like Ros" e's Uncle Patrick who arrived with little and through hard work have made a comfortable life for themselves, to those newly arrived struggling in sweatshops and factories to earn enough to live. Through the character of Gussie Garoff, young readers are introduced to the efforts of workers to obtain better pay and safer working conditions. Gussie explains to Rose and her sister how two years before, hundreds of girls in New York, Rochester and Philadephia went on strike to fight for their rights, how she was beaten and thrown into jail by the police and how she was not allowed to see a doctor for her broken arm. Gussie is referring to the general strike of 1909. From the AFL-CIO website the strike is described as follows: "The next morning, throughout New York's garment district, more than 15,000 shirtwaist makers walked out. They demanded a 20 percent pay raise, a 52-hour work week and extra pay for overtime."  The following day "...more than 20,000 workers from 500 factories had walked out. " While smaller factories had agreed to the demands, the owners of the Triangle factory along with those of the twenty largest factories formed an association to resist in every way possible, the workers' demands. Strkers were arrested by the police and jailed and/or fined by the courts. The strike was finally resolved in 1910.

The tragedy at the Triangle factory is foreshadowed in several ways in the novel. While they are staying at their Uncle Patrick's apartment, Rose and Maureen spend some time talking outside on the fire escape. Rose explains to her younger sister that it is used if the inside stairs are on fire. When Maureen notes that the stairs do not go all the way to the ground, Rose surmises that a person must jump. Maureen states she could never jump but Rose counters, "Ye'd be amazed how much courage you'd have with flames lickin' at yer arse..."  In fact this is exactly what Rose experiences during the Triange factory fire but her fear of jumping and seeing that the firemen cannot save those who do, leads her to find another way to escape. 

When Rose Nolan begins her first day at work in the Triangle factory, Gussie explains to her some of the policies in the factory that will ultimately determine who survives and who dies in the fire. Rose notes that the elevators take only a few people at a time and move slowly and learns that at closing the workers are made to walk down the stairs. Another girl warns Rose not be late because "They lock the doors at eight sharp and don't open them again until noon..."  Rose is shocked to see how crowded the ninth floor is: "The entire room was filled with long tables placed close together, with a double row of sewin' machines stretchin' from end to end of each one... The tables were so close to each other, it was difficult to squeeze past when two girls were seated back to back."   The crowded conditions mean there is no clear and easy path out to the doors which are locked during the day to prevent theft and the elevator which was is never in service at the end of each shift. 

Auch does an excellent job portraying life for the young shirtwaist factory workers who dress stylishly and have fun going to the nickelodeon. The novel also offers a realistic description of the fire that conveys both the terror of the victims and the pain and loss of the families of the workers who died in the fire. An interesting aspect to the novel is Rose's description of the New York City's wealthy and elite coming to view the aftermath of the tragedy and the bodies. In Washington Square, Rose, Maureen and Jacob watch as a procession of stage buses bring people in to view the scene. "Their open tops were filled with young couples laughin' and chattin' as they went to view the tragedy. The women were dressed to the nines, with bright feathered and flowered hats. They were doin' this as a lark--just a little entertainment for a Sunday mornin'..." This deeply angers Rose who decides to confront several people. However, historians note that both wealthy and immigrant poor were motivated by the horror to work together, although their goals were somewhat different. 

In sixteen-year-old Rose Nolan, an Irish Catholic immigrant, Auch has crafted and determined, intelligent and quick thinking heroine. Although Rose loses her best friends and Gussie in the fire, she remains determined to stay in America, but this time to work in a union shop that will look after her rights. It is clear the tragedy has changed her and her sister Maureen forever.

The title, Ashes of Roses has several meanings. The colour of the dress Rose wears to work on the day of the tragedy is called "ashes of roses" a sort of rose gray taffeta. During her escape from the Triangle building, she tears her dress and that piece of fabric shows up in the items used to identify the dead. Rose who goes to look for her sister and friends among the dead, is horrified to see a scrap of her dress. Secondly, one of the most common names of the young women who died in the tragedy was Rose. So the fire indeed contained the ashes of (many) Roses, among others.

Told in the voice of 16 year old Rose Nolan, Ashes of Roses is an engaging account of a tragedy that forever changed America. It will appeal to teens who love historical fiction.

Book Details:
Ashes of Roses by Mary Jane Auch.
New York: Laurel Leaf              2004
256 pp.