by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Published by Clarion/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017
464 pages
ISBN: 978-0-544-58650-5
Age 13 and older
High school senior Sal(vador) Silva was 3 when his mom died. Adopted by Vicente, his mom’s best friend, the love between father and son is palpable. Sal’s best friend, Sam(antha) Diaz, has a single mom so wrapped up in her own life that Sam feels like an afterthought. Sal’s friend Fito lives in a family of addicts and works two jobs to survive, his hopes on college. Sal has a good life and he knows it. So why is he suddenly full of rage? He lashes out even before he learns that Mima, his grandmother, is dying. Mima means the world to Sal, his dad, and their extended Mexican American family, in which it’s never mattered that Sal is white. Sal worries his instinct to respond with his fists—to a whispered a slur about his dad, who is gay, or to a boy who treats Sam badly—is a trait from the birth father he’s never cared to find out about. It makes the letter his dad has given him, which his mom wrote for him before she died, too scary to open. Several explosive events disrupt the shifting currents of daily life in a deeply felt story also graced with moments of humor. Exquisitely realized and genuine, it’s about living and struggling and loss and regret. It’s about changing relationships and growing up and friendship. It’s about the power of language. Above all, it’s about expansiveness of the words “love” and “family.” ©2017 Cooperative Children’s Book Center