A young African-American girl struggles to reconcile her parents' divorce and the subsequent fragmentation of her family in this eloquent and life-affirming novel from Johnson (Humming Whispers, 1995, etc.). The town of Harvey, Ohio, in the summer of 1975 isn't much of a playground for the narrator, 13-year-old Doreen, her younger brother, Robert, and their mother, Mama Dot: Plant closings and a stagnant economy have left it a desperate, depressed version of its former, thriving self. Yet Mama Dot attends Ohio University as a full-time student with plans to become a museum curator, and the kids have plenty of friends to play with, although the memory of their father, who recently moved to Chicago, is a source of constant sadness. The America that Johnson recreates is far removed from the Bicentennial euphoria the characters anticipate, one that reels from the Vietnam War as a destroyer of fathers and husbands, offering no comfort nor the reward of a decent job upon their return. Johnson is honest enough to offer no easy answers: While Doreen's father returns to the family, it is only for a visit; when he offers to take Robert, who has stopped talking, Doreen realizes that she must make yet another sacrifice. But the message is uplifting--even though her family cannot be together, and she is still in pain, Doreen is left at the conclusion still full of love and, more importantly, hope. (Fiction. 9-12)
