Thursday, February 25, 2021

Nothing More Dangerous by Allen Eskens

First Line: I was fifteen years old the day I learned that Ms. Lida Poe had gone missing.
 
Fifteen-year-old Boady Sanden is busily saving up money to leave his suffocating little hometown of Jessup, Missouri. One day soon-- poof!-- he's going to be gone. He doesn't think his mother, who's still grieving the death of Boady's father, will miss him, and he certainly won't miss being bullied at St. Ignatius High School.
 
But all that changes when Thomas Elgin moves in across the road. Becoming acquainted with the Elgins-- a Black family settling in a community with strict notions of "us" and "them"-- forces Boady to rethink the world he's always taken for granted. He begins to notice, really notice, the people around him: his mother who still wraps herself in the loss of her husband, the neighbor with a mysterious past, the quiet boss with his own secret.
 
But the biggest secret of all is what happened to Lida Poe, the Black woman who keeps the books at a local plastics factory. The rumor mill has it that Ms. Poe left town with a hundred thousand dollars of company money. What Boady doesn't realize is that-- although he's never met Ms. Lida Poe-- the threads of her life are securely woven into the very fabric of his own world, and when it comes to race and class, he's going to be forced to choose sides. 

~
 
Young Boady Sanden has the type of voice that grabs hold of me and drags me right into the heart of a story. He's a typical fifteen-year-old boy who is blind to everything unless it has some impact on his own personal wants or desires. Boady isn't an "Us Versus Them" type of person, he's a good kid at heart, but author Allen Eskens does a superb job of showing how Boady has absorbed facets of racism without even realizing that he has done so. This is a lesson that many people need to learn, and Boady begins to learn his when the Elgins move in across the street.
 
Parts of the mystery surrounding what happened to Lida Poe are relatively easy to deduce, but not all of them, and the journey to Truth is mesmerizing. The scales begin to fall from Boady's eyes, and as he finally starts seeing people like his mother and his neighbor Hoke Gardner and his boss as individuals with their own lives and wants and needs, so do readers.
 
Nothing More Dangerous is a coming of age story that inexorably gathers momentum until it blossoms into something much larger than the sum of its parts. Boady Sanden's going to be with me for a long time, and I think he will be with you, too.

Nothing More Dangerous by Allen Eskens
eISBN: 9780316509749
Mulholland Books © 2019
eBook, 305 pages
 
Historical Mystery, Standalone
Rating: A+
Source: Purchased from Amazon.

11 comments:

  1. This sounds like a fantastic perspective from which to explore the local culture, larger issues of class and race, and coming of age, Cathy. It's not easy to write with a teen voice, but it sounds as though that worked very well here. And it's an interesting setting, too, for this type of story.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It may not be easy to write with a teen voice, but Eskens is a master at it.

      Delete
  2. Wow, this sounds really good. I think I would have picked it up just based on that great cover alone, but what you say about it makes that a certainty. Looking forward to it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If you haven't read Eskens' The Life We Bury, you ought to give that one a try, too. These two are my favorite Eskens books (and the others are good, too). This man knows how to write.

      Delete
    2. I will definitely do that. Should have this one soon, as I am the only one asking my library for it at the moment.

      Delete
  3. Yes! I'll second that motion. Loved this book. Reminds me of Ordinary Grace and just-read The Distant Dead.
    Now I have to read more of Eskens' books.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, there are strong similarities to Krueger's and Young's books. All three are excellent. If you haven't read it, read The Life We Bury.

      Delete
  4. And I"m glad to see it made your top books of 2021 list. These authors who can so well portray the pangs of growing up of children or teenagers who have to learn about some of life's traumas are just special. And they make me cry.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Coming of age stories keep popping up on my list, and this one really appeals to me. Thanks, Cathy!.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for taking the time to make a comment. I really appreciate it!