Peace Is a Four-Letter Word

In this "stranger comes to town" variant set in California's San Joaquin Valley during the run-up to the 1990 Persian Gulf War, the message unfortunately overwhelms the story. The daughter of orange ranchers, Emily Rankin is a cheerleader who dates a basketball star. Then at the start of her junior year, a new teacher reorders her thinking. With her Harvard PhD, Dr. Connell McKenzie seems out of place teaching high school history, and her condescending and inadequate explanation for why she's left her husband in Boston and moved to one of the poorest counties in the nation ("I want to try to understand you people") won't endear her to many. She alienates Emily's classmates with the grim reading she assigns because, she says, "I don't want you to just know a few facts about the Civil War, I want you to feel it." She's also stridently anti-war in a conservative community. Emily joins her in protesting U.S. involvement in Iraq, but does so at the expense of rankling her boyfriend, her fellow cheerleaders and pretty much everybody else. The story might have worked as a study in standing up for one's beliefs in the face of intense hostility, if the portrayal of war supporters and protestors were more nuanced. ("All war protestors are cowards and traitors," one citizen says at a meeting, while Emily accuses the servicemen she sees on TV of enlisting so they could play with "life-sized GI Joe toys.) An earnest effort, perhaps, but ultimately an unconvincing novel. Ages 12-up. (Oct.)