STAR OF LU°S

While addressing themes of identity, family history, racism, and coming of age, Talbert (Heart of a Jaguar, 1995, etc.) doesn’t focus enough on any one issue to give his book power. Attending school and Sunday mass, watching baseball games in the park, and hosing the clay off his father when he comes home from the brick factory are the routines that fill teenaged Lu°s’s life in East Los Angeles. Life changes dramatically, however, when his father joins the fighting ranks of WWII, and Lu°s’s mother receives news that her estranged father is dying. Coping with his father’s absence, Lu°s must also adjust to a new way of life when he moves to his mother’s childhood home in small Las Manos, New Mexico. It is hard for Lu°s to adapt to the simple farm life, but with the help of two uncles, he learns to love its charms. He also uncovers the truth about his family and their hidden Jewish heritage. While Lu°s grapples with a shifting sense of self, he and his mother return to Los Angeles where even more changes wait. Talbert skillfully draws contrasts between the city—with its sometimes simmering melting pot—and the more contained Las Manos; his knack for atmosphere, imagery, and characterization save the novel from its hastily developed themes and hurried, surface relationships. (glossary) (Fiction. 12-14)