Abstract
Reviewed by: Feels Like Home Deborah Stevenson Charlton-Trujillo, E. E. Feels Like Home. Delacorte, 2007 [224p] Library ed. ISBN 0-385-90349-9$18.99 Trade ed. ISBN 0-385-73332-1$15.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 7-10 Family life has never been perfect for Michelle, known as Mickey; her mother left years ago, and her adored brother, Danny, one of the small Texas town's beloved football stars, departed home abruptly after his involvement in a tragedy that killed a friend. When Mickey's father dies in a car accident, Danny returns out of the blue to care for his now seventeen-year-old sister, but the siblings won't succeed in creating a family if they can't sort out their anger, guilt, and grief. Charlton-Trujillo (author of the compelling Prizefighter en Mi Casa, BCCB 10/06) vividly evokes the insular life of a small Texas town with a Friday Night Lights obsession with football, and it's utterly credible that Danny, as the hero gone wrong, would be persona non grata there. The book is also deft in its clear indications that Mickey's view of her life with—and sometimes without—her alcoholic father is a rose-tinted one, and that it's her feeling of betrayal toward her beloved older brother rather than any real change in status that elicits her anger. The use of Hinton's Outsiders as a sibling touchstone is overplayed, however, and the secret about Danny's role in the tragedy (he's taking the rap for the friend who died) and Mickey's repression of the relevant memories are fairly hackneyed plot devices; it's never explained why the sibs would have to live together to achieve the desired rapprochement (Mickey has lived for long periods of time with family friends), and Danny's genuinely unstable behavior is never really acknowledged as problematic in a legal guardian. The picture of small-town life is still a vivid one, though, and readers will be glad to see Mickey negotiating her way to a happier and more accepting adulthood. Copyright © 2007 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
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