Anything but Okay

Sixteen-year-old Stella Walker’s brother, Rob, hasn’t been the same since he returned from his second tour in Afghanistan. Their parents, themselves veterans, tread on eggshells, unsure what to do about Rob’s PTSD, and Stella feels invisible within their family. At school, Stella and her best friend Farida—whose parents fled Iraq after the Gulf War—confront sexist and bigoted views among a few of the students, sentiments that are fanned by the town’s mayor, who is running for governor on an anti-immigrant platform. When the mayor’s son Chris announces his candidacy for class president, Stella decides to run against him. Rob is caught on video punching one of Chris’s friends for taunting a Sikh boy at the mall, a moment that turns both public and political, and Stella must decide if she should try to win or run a campaign that reflects true issues. Told through Stella’s first-person narrative, Rob’s letters to a veteran pal, and police interviews, this novel by Littman (Backlash) tackles the current sociopolitical climate with multifaceted, redeemable characters. Unfortunately, Farida, the book’s lone protagonist of color, is employed as little more than a moral compass who must educate her friends about white privilege. Ages 12–up. [em]Agent: Jennifer Laughran, Andrea Brown Literary. (Oct.) [/em]