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Ages 12 and up.Įditor’s Note: This young adult book has two reviews due to the nature of the sub­ject and the per­son­al expe­ri­ences of Nathan Weissler, our sec­ond reviewer.

It offers read­ers an excel­lent dis­cus­sion about morals as well as expec­ta­tions, fam­i­ly, faith and the def­i­n­i­tion of suc­cess. This book is a ful­fill­ing expe­ri­ence. Noth­ing - even the pos­si­bil­i­ty of love - is overwritten. Fran­cis­co Stork takes us into the thoughts of this trans­form­ing char­ac­ter, sur­pris­ing the read­er many times over. When he final­ly decides what to do, his own com­ing-of-age jour­ney toward self dis­cov­ery tru­ly begins. Unrav­el­ing the mys­tery sur­round­ing this girl is excit­ing, and Marcelo’s keen under­stand­ing of man’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to those who are suf­fer­ing will stay with the read­er. His under­stand­ing of Judaism and morals is lit­er­al­ly put to the test when he dis­cov­ers a pho­to of a young woman injured by the neg­li­gence of his father’s law firm’s most pow­er­ful clients. Although he is not Jew­ish, Marce­lo meets week­ly with a local female rab­bi to study Torah and oth­er Jew­ish texts. Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to Jew­ish read­ers are the tough eth­i­cal issues cen­tral to this novel’s sur­pris­ing plot.

Stork inte­grates what is dif­fer­ent about him - he lis­tens to inter­nal music, lives in a tree house, and prefers to dis­cuss his spe­cial inter­est, reli­gion - with what makes him like us. His affect is flat and he under­stands that he can­not read facial expres­sions or inter­nal­ize some com­plex emo­tions. Marce­lo is not your typ­i­cal pro­tag­o­nist. It is a sto­ry that dares the read­er to be a bet­ter per­son. This is a book that refus­es to be for­got­ten. If he does not, he will be main­streamed into the large pub­lic high school in the fall. If Marce­lo suc­cess­ful­ly works in the law firm’s mail room for the sum­mer, he can choose to return to his school.

His father, a part­ner in a pow­er­ful law firm, how­ev­er, thinks that Marce­lo is too cod­dled - and wants him to enter the real world ASAP. It is the sum­mer before senior year, and 17-year-old Marce­lo San­doval, the pro­tag­o­nist of this well-craft­ed nov­el, is excit­ed about his sum­mer job, tak­ing care of the ponies at his school’s ther­a­peu­tic rid­ing sta­bles.