THE MAN WITH THE RED BAG

Bunting tackles a distasteful subject—the power of suspicion and prejudice over the minds of otherwise ordinary people—through the eyes of a 12-year-old on a post-9/11 spring-break bus tour with his grandmother. The tour to the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore serves as background for Kevin’s vigilant observation of one of the other passengers—a man with a dark complexion, Greek name and a red bag he won’t put down. Kevin and Geneva, a young girl on the trip, imagine that Mr. Stavros is carrying a bomb and has evil intentions, and the two of them, along with one of the adult passengers, chew relentlessly on their suspicions. Though Bunting keeps the pace quick and handles her briefly sketched characters with a sure hand (except for an occasional stumble over slang), the plot wears thin. A perceptive reader will anticipate the sad and simple answer long before the tidy ending reveals the reason that the contents of his bag are so important to him. (Fiction. 9-11)