ACROSS THE FACE OF THE STORM

Journalist Adams turns his pen from adult nonfiction about Latin America to YA fiction grounded in the military history of the Mexican Revolution.

After 15-year-old Frederick and 17-year-old Isabel’s mother passes away in Washington, D.C., in 1911, the siblings set off for her homeland of Mexico in search of their only remaining parent. Their White American father, a professor, has gone there to support the revolutionary forces of Pancho Villa, who is trying to bring an end to the regime of President Porfirio Díaz. On the way, they join up with a traveling band of citizen soldiers, a ragtag team who hope to lend support to the revolutionary cause. A series of minor skirmishes escalates on the way to the climactic battle along the banks of the Río Bravo. Once the violence starts, character development takes a back seat to play-by-play descriptions of battles and weaponry. Though the main purpose for the teens’ presence in Mexico is to reunite with their father, this event comes and goes anticlimactically, with the story returning instead to minutiae of military movements. While there is certainly an audience for plot-driven military dramas and for engaging fictionalized accounts of Latin American history, this title cannot seem to decide whether to be a character-driven novel or detailed military history. Secondary characters likewise suffer from minimal backstory and character development.

A novel that vacillates between military history and family drama.