Reviews

In the vein of documentary films Spellbound and Mad Hot Ballroom, Resolved follows high school debate teams over a period of two years all the way to the tournament of champions. With the exception of one team, all were from private high schools. The public high school team consisted of two boys from an inner city high school, who had not been trained to speak in short-hand and didn’t base their arguments solely on research. Instead, they argued that, based on their personal experience and how they felt, the topic of the debate was inherently racist.

David Sheff shares the heart-breaking story of his son Nic’s tenuous life on drugs. Interwoven in the story are the results of research and studies about kids from shared custody homes, the affects of drugs (especially Methamphetamine) on the human body and psyche, and advice from a variety of sources for friends and families of addicts. Beautiful Boy especially resonates with me, as Sheff searches for answers as to how this could have happened to his son and in what ways he might be responsible.

On a whim, after passing through Wyoming on her way home to New York, Shreve Stockton decides to pack it all in and move to this absolutely foreign place. There, she discovers a life far different from what she had previously known. She finds herself in the role of caregiver of a coyote pup, whom she names Charlie, and begins sending out daily pictures to friends and family. Those e-mails grew into www.dailycoyote.net and later into this book, The Daily Coyote.

As a researcher at Cal Tech in 1985, Stacey O’Brien made an easy target when a four day old barn owl with an injured wing needed a permanent home. After Wesley had consumed Stacey’s life I have to wonder if, had she known, she would have taken on the responsibility.

When Casey Fielder, manager of the local O’Ruddy’s restaurant, allows a fight between the privileged St. Brendan’s kids and those from the public high school to escalate, his inaction puts him at risk of being charged with negligence. As a result of the fight, Colin Chase has suffered brain damage. Shawver alternates between Casey and Colin’s mother Lea as they both investigate the circumstances behind the fight. Casey has been fired and in exploring the reasons for the fight hopes to find absolution for his inaction.

This memoir would be overwhelmingly sad for me, had I not already read Old School by the same author and know that he becomes a successful author and teacher of literature at Stanford. But if you didn’t know that this child redeems himself in the end, this would be sad, a sad tale indeed.