Away to Stay

Family proves both an elusive dream and disquieting reality in Kuryla’s delightfully quirky debut. Olya, 12, gets her first taste of stability when her itinerant, duplicitous Russian émigré mother, Irina, brings her to the home of Jack, the man she claims is a cousin, in Riverside, Calif. Jack turns out to be a paranoid, trigger-happy ex-soldier haunted by memories of Afghanistan whose only real relationship is with his dog Bird, whom he served with overseas and has since dognapped from the same K-9 police unit he was unceremoniously discharged from. As Irina disappears on a harebrained scheme to become a ballerina and stalk Mikhail Baryshnikov, and with Child Protective Services closing in, Olya enters into a battle of wills with Jack to train the untrainable Bird. She also takes up with a mysterious neighbor named McFate; struggles to present a normal front to the rightfully concerned Nurse Fenton, a former coworker of Irina’s at the local hospital during a rare stint of gainful employment; and eventually joins Jack and McFate on a dog heist that threatens their delicate peace. Throughout, Olya pursues the deep secret kept from her by Irina: the identity of her father. Kuryla shines in her descriptions of the offbeat characters and their antics, and makes Olya’s relationships with the damaged men especially touching. It adds up to a captivating coming-of-age yarn. (Feb.)