America

You try not to think. You try not to imagine, but then those cracks pop up, and these flashes squeeze right through. At first, some of it's not too bad, and you get stupid, maybe even wanting a little more, but then you pull yourself together, knowing what all is likely going to ooze out if you're not careful....

Fifteen-year-old America has been nowhere, has been nobody. Separated from his foster mother. A runaway. A patient. Without love. Without hope. And, eventually, without the will to live.

Until Dr. B. steps in. To listen. To explore. And to find within America both the story and the boy who are lost.

At the discretion of the social welfare system, a 5-year-old boy named America trustingly leaves the safe haven of his foster home for a visit with his desperate, drug-addicted mother. And because of that one lapse in adult judgment, a child is lost within the system until almost 11 years later when he tries to end his own life. It is the patient therapist Dr. B. who must coax an embittered and damaged America into revisiting all the dark alleys of that lonely suicide road in order to face down his fears and dare to be found. "I'm not that little kid anymore.... I'm not white and I'm not black and I'm not anything, but I'm a little bit of everything.... I look down and it's just me." Searingly raw and so painfully honest it nearly draws blood, young-adult novelist E.R. Frank's powerful sophomore effort about a boy nearly broken by neglect and abuse will dampen every eye and brand every heart. Reminiscent of Han Nolan's Born Blue and Sapphire's Push, America is a similarly cathartic combination of brutal truth and brilliant writing. It is simply not to be missed. (Ages 13 and older) --Jennifer Hubert