The life Jack Osborne knew has just ended. One night the seventh-grader wakes up to find masked men ransacking his house; the next thing he knows, his father has been arrested for drug trafficking. When the accusations against his dad prove true, Jack, his sister Joanne, and his mother enter the FBI’s witness protection program. They must leave everything behind and relocate to a small town in Nevada under an assumed identity. Each member of the family deals with this monumental upheaval in a different way. Jack’s mother maintains calm composure, while 16-year-old Joanne sees the experience as an opportunity to hone her acting skills. Only Jack, who becomes Zach in his new life, has difficulty adjusting. The contrast between his wealthy former life and the tiny town they are hiding in is stark. He misses his friends, his school, and, above all, his father. Along with this story line, the author includes two interesting subplots. One involves the drug cartel his father was involved in: they have found the family and are preparing to have them killed to prevent Neil’s testimony. A second, more richly drawn layer is the inclusion of a large community of Basque people who live nearby in the mountains, continuing their old-fashioned life as shepherds. Jack/Zach makes connections with them and they play a large part in the conclusion of the novel. An explosive but believable ending leaves a few loose ends, but feels satisfying. Jack/Zach is a complex character, struggling with all kinds of emotions about his new life circumstances while also trying to be a normal teenager. An intriguing idea, well-written, with many heart-stopping moments, this should appeal to a wide variety of readers. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7868-0617-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
Baz is an excellent thief. She has been since the beginning, when Demi found her as a tiny child and she came to live with him in Fay’s den of child crooks in an (perhaps frustratingly) unspecified urban slum. No one is as good at picking pockets as the innocent-looking team of Baz and Demi, and they’re content to be Fay’s favorite children. When Demi steals a glittering ring from an uptown lady, they fall into a lengthy chain of betrayal and corruption. Spies within their own gang are the least of their problems; the ring belonged to the chief of police’s wife, and both the police and the mob are after them. Trusting anyone is dangerous, but Baz doesn’t want to end up like Fay and Demi, who trust no one. Lavish details of the hellish environment, from mud flats that drown the unwary to the festering garbage mountain on which enslaved children pick trash for the mob, derail the adventure’s forward momentum, slowing it to a crawl. What ought to be a thrilling chase drags, despite the charming, streetwise heroine. (Fiction. 12-13)
Pub Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-312-56330-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Chelsea Green
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2010
A girl’s interest in family history overlaps a coming-of-age story about her vestigial understanding of her mother after death, and her own awareness of self and place in the world. Junior high-school student Carrie Schmidt identifies strongly with the missing girls of 1967’s headlines about runaways. Carrie’s mother is dead and she has just moved in with her grandmother, Mutti, who embarrasses her with her foreign accent and ways. Carrie’s ideal is her friend Mona’s mother, a “professional” who dresses properly, smells good, and knows how to set out a table; readers will grasp the mother’s superficiality, even though Carrie, at first, does not. Mutti has terror in her past, and tells Carrie stories of the Jews in WWII Vienna, and of subsequent events in nine concentration camps; these are mined under the premise that Carrie needs stories for “dream” material and her interest in so-called lucid dreaming, a diverting backdrop that deepens the story without overwhelming it. Mutti’s gripping, terrible tales and the return of an old friend who raised Carrie’s mother when she was sent to Scotland at age nine awaken in Carrie a connection to her current family, to her ancestry, and, ultimately, to a stronger sense of self. This uncommon novel from Metzger (Ellen’s Case, 1995, etc.) steps out of the genre of historical fiction to tell a story as significant to contemporary readers as to the inhabitants of the era it evokes. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-670-87777-8
Page Count: 194
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
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