Dallas Robbins

The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams: City Weekly

Living in Utah, you’ve heard it before: old creepy guy marries prepubescent virgin on polygamous compound. When explored in fiction, such stories can be as over-baked as last Sunday’s casserole. But Carol Lynch Williams does the improbable in her latest novel The Chosen One. She takes a far-too-common headline and creates a brave, uncommon voice in the character of 13-year-old Kyra.

Julia Alvarez's Return to Sender

Tackling the looming political conundrum of illegal immigration would be a challenge for any novelist, let alone a young adult novelist. But Julia Alvarez spins a brave tale in Return to Sender, putting a face on the fears and challenges of illegal workers in America with personal aplomb.

After being injured in a tractor accident, Tyler’s father hires a migrant family to help keep their Vermont farm going. Tyler can’t help but look on this family with fear—especially Mari, the oldest daughter among three, who is proud of her Mexican heritage but is slowly becoming connected to American culture.

David Ebershoff's The 19th Wife

David Ebershoff’s moving and humorous story The 19th Wife explores the unlikely lives of two remarkable characters: Jordan Scott, a 21st-century “lost boy” and hardscrabble gay man, who travels from Los Angeles back to the site of his polygamous upbringing to help absolve his mother of the murder of his father; and Ann Eliza Winters, the novel’s namesake, who divorced Brigham Young and lectured against polygamy across 19th-century America.

Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach

“They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible. But it is never easy.”

The opening hook to Ian McEwan’s latest novel On Chesil Beach is a delicious invitation into a world that time forgot. McEwan, the celebrated, literary Limey, whose previous works include such novels as Saturday, Atonement, and Enduring Love, has now focused his attention on two characters with such a rich and complex history, taking the reader back to a time and place that we sometimes wonder existed at all.