Sisters in the Wind by Angeline Boulley

SISTERS IN THE WIND by Angeline Boulley (Firekeeper's Daughter and Warrior Girl Unearthed) received an impressive six starred reviews. It is a rather tragic tale of Lucy, a young girl whose father dies when she is just 13 and who spends the next five years mostly in foster care. Some of her placements are heart-warming but most are heart-wrenching, and she develops resilience and self-reliance while also forming bonds with fellow foster care teens. Like many of Boulley’s characters, Lucy has Native American heritage. She encounters racism, human trafficking, drug use, even murder. The writing is excellent (even with the frequent flashbacks), but this is a difficult story to read at times: Publishers Weekly describes it as “a devastating yet gripping tale of finding family, recontextualizing faith, and reclaiming ancestry that serves as a searing critique of the ways that systems can fail vulnerable youth.” School Library Journal calls SISTERS IN THE WIND “a gritty story of trust and betrayal” and Booklist says, “this unforgettable novel is impossible to put down.” While this story works as a standalone, Boulley chronicles events between her two previous novels and has incorporated many of those characters. All three mysteries are excellent. 

The Dark Wives by Ann Cleeves

THE DARK WIVES by Ann Cleeves is the latest (#11) in the Vera Stanhope mystery series. These are generally best read in order, but the individual stories (see reviews for The Darkest Evening and The Rising Tide) do stand on their own. The series takes place in the Northeast of England and this time DI Stanhope and her team (loyal Joe, persistent Charlie, and newcomer Rosie) are attempting to solve the murder of a young man, Josh Woodburn, who worked as a caregiver at Rosebank, a children’s home. Cleeves not only crafts a puzzling murder mystery; she includes the disappearance of a fourteen-year-old, Chloe Spence, on the same night Josh died. Those events and the death of another Rosebank resident offer ample opportunity to weave in social commentary on child services in the UK. In fact, Cleeves dedicates THE DARK WIVES to “teens everywhere, and especially to the Dark Wives - uppity young women with minds of their own, struggling to find a place in a difficult world.” There are undercurrents about power and money in this well-written and suspenseful tale. Like many of Vera’s fans, I am already looking forward to the next in the series.

Interested readers may also want to investigate the website Reading for Wellbeing which Ann Cleeves founded a few years ago in order to promote solace through stories.

Troubled by Rob Henderson

Subtitled “A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class,” TROUBLED by Rob Henderson describes his experiences in foster care, the military, Yale and Cambridge. In some ways, this text is reminiscent of 2016’s Hillbilly Elegy as both chronicle childhood instability (life with drug addicts and abandonment by parents) followed by military stints and time at Yale (in fact, Vance “blurbed” this new book). Henderson is quietly reflective and focuses a great deal on what he labels as “luxury beliefs.” He writes at length about differences in experiences and perspectives, noting, for example, “in one of my classes at Yale, I learned that eighteen out of the twenty students were raised by both of their birth parents. That stunned me, because none of the kids I knew growing up was raised by both of their parents.” Later, he comments, “I grew to understand that there were aspects of social class that can't be quantified or put on a resume” and “part of integrating into this community meant having a cursory knowledge of the latest op-eds and fashionable news items.” Henderson himself has written an essay with excerpts (“Only the affluent can afford to learn strange vocabulary. Ordinary people have real problems to worry about”) from TROUBLED for The Wall Street Journal. Given Henderson’s frustration, anger, and bitterness at “elites” and hypocrisy, it would be interesting to compare and contrast his conclusions with the analysis and commentary on White Rural Rage recently published in The New York Times.