OUT OF THE BLUE

Stu knows the military. His mom is a colonel stepping into an assignment as base commander at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. What’s really new is that his older brother is off to college and his dad is in Nevada with Gram. It may be a trial separation for his parents, and Stu is feeling odd, missing the normal household chaos. A neighboring family with an eight-year-old and a kid Stu’s age has its own struggles as a stepfamily and are newbies to the “blue.” When his mother is deployed, Stu struggles to cope with surprise after surprise. Getting a driver’s license, sports, e-mail pals and girlfriends mingle as plot elements with what it means to “come into the blue,” as being a part of the Air Force family is called. Stu’s choices are key to a terrible accident that feels almost inevitable. There’s no skirting consequences, nor seeing the mistakes in hindsight. This tale is mostly plot-driven, the best aspect being the portrayal of the effects of deployment on military families. Timely. (Fiction. 12-16)