This tear-jerker will leave readers wanting to follow the next chapter in Darius’ life.Īfter surviving a suicide attempt, a fragile teen isn't sure she can endure without cutting herself. Khorram’s debut novel is filled with insight into the lives of teens, weaving together the reality of living with mental illness while also dealing with identity and immigration politics. For the first time in a long time, Darius learns to love himself no matter what external forces attempt to squash his confidence. Sohrab teaches Darius what friendship is really about: loyalty, honesty, and someone who has your back in a football (soccer) match. But all that changes when Darius meets Sohrab, a Bahá’í boy, in Yazd. When he arrives in Iran, learning to play the Persian card game Rook, socializing, and celebrating Nowruz with a family he had never properly met before is all overwhelming and leaves Darius wondering if he’ll ever truly belong anywhere. He’s mocked for his name and nerdy interests at Chapel Hill High School in Portland, Oregon, and doesn’t speak enough Farsi to communicate with his Iranian relatives either. Iranian on his mother’s side and white American on his father’s side, Darius never quite fits in. When Darius’ grandfather becomes terminally ill, Darius, along with his parents and younger sister, travels to Iran for the first time in his life. 12+)ĭarius Kellner suffers from depression, bullying by high school jocks, and a father who seems to always be disappointed in him.
A valiant, earnest try, but not a successful one. Rinaldi does draw Jefferson's complex ambivalence toward his own slaves credibly and with sympathy but Harriet's privileged situation and her agonized decision to abandon both her home and her minimally evoked blackness remain unconvincing. The novel itself rambles and is repetitive its style echoes the period, but not consistently-at times the author's voice, with whiffs of modern revisionism or political correctness, seems to supercede Harriet's. She provides a bibliography and a historical note explaining how she has expanded Brodie's account in order to explore her own theme of alienation but, lamentably, fails to make clear that the Hemings' parentage is very much in doubt, or to distinguish between real and invented characters. Rinaldi bases her story on Fawn Brodie's highly speculative theories (largely discredited by recent historians) concerning Jefferson's possible children. The Jeffersons arrange for her to pass as white, as her older brother has done. Leaving Monticello and her family seems unthinkable, but after Jefferson's grandson-in-law assaults her she realizes what the future holds if she stays. At 19, Harriet begins a journal describing the events leading to her difficult decision to claim her promised freedom at 21. Harriet and her brothers, children of Jefferson's slave Sally Hemings, have good reason to believe that their beloved master is also their father.
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