The Echo Park Castaways

The Los Angeles foster care system makes a striking backdrop for this small-scale adventure with ample heart. The four children who live with overworked Russian widow Mrs. K include 13-year-old high achiever Nevaeh, who is black; Salvadoran Vic, a hyperactive 11-year-old who escapes into superspy fantasies; Quentin, a white kid on the autism spectrum; and Latinx Mara, a younger Spanish-speaking girl. The first three narrate the story, which follows them from gentrifying Echo Park to beach-adjacent Torrance on a quest to find Quentin’s mother; it’s unclear why Hennessey (The Other Boy) leaves Mara’s voice absent, but the omission seems unfair. Nevaeh is the voice of brutal realism: regarding Louis Sachar’s Holes, she observes: “It was nice to get a happy ending for a change, even when it was totally unbelievable.” Hennessey is honest about the realities of deportation and foster care but manages to create a believably gentle conclusion for her characters. And she earns her ending, in which the group moves beyond survival-based existences to looking out for each other and becomes a family in the process. Ages 8–12. [em](July) [/em]