BABY & SOLO

Through work, friendship, and honesty, 17-year-old Joel confronts his difficult past and begins healing.

At the suggestion of his psychiatrist—and despite his worried mother’s concerns—Joel starts working part time at a video store (it’s 1996). On the first day he is asked to choose a movie character’s name for his work alias, and he picks Han Solo from Star Wars. The significance of this choice is revealed much later, as readers slowly learn why Joel was in and out of psychiatric hospitals for much of his youth. Joel’s burgeoning friendship with co-worker Baby (from Dirty Dancing) is refreshingly platonic. It challenges Joel, who is torn between wanting to be seen as “Normal” and his growing desire to confide in her about his past. In his sometimes-wry, always cleareyed, narration, Joel drops tantalizing clues about his family’s pain and his struggles with mental health. The author seamlessly weaves sound psychological advice into the story through Joel’s observations about how he reacts to the behavior of his parents and cast of misfit co-workers. This sensitive, complex, and layered novel provides insight into family trauma and mental health recovery while taking readers on a journey of discovery that ends with an unexpected revelation. Most characters are White; there is some diversity in the supporting cast.

An absorbing story of recovery from trauma.