Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Freudenberger follows Lost and Wanted (2019) with another intriguing tale of a woman scientist, family, and life's confoundments. French marine biologist Nathalie is studying the impact of climate change on corals near a French Polynesian atoll. Her American cardiologist ex-husband is navigating the maelstrom of COVID-19 in New York City. Their teenage daughter, Pia, is pulled between them, a tug-of-heart complicated by two disparate places, cultures, and crises. Stephen's second wife, Kate, a high-school teacher with a painful past, is pregnant and teaching remotely. One of her students, Athyna, is struggling with alarming problems at home, posing a rending contrast to privileged, if miserable, Pia. Darkly obsessed with the ongoing damage wrought by nuclear testing in the Pacific, Pia left "paradise" for New York, but stays in touch with Raffi, a Tahitian who works for Nathalie's lab and who may be considering ecosabotage to protest the looming threat of catastrophically disruptive undersea mining. Freudenberger is fluent in every realm, social conundrum, and crime against the earth she brings into focus, keenly attuned to science and emotion, tradition and high-tech, race and gender, greed and conscience, irony and tragedy. Each character's challenges are significant on scales intimate and global and their wrestling with secrets, anger, and fear grows increasingly suspenseful in this lambent, deeply sympathetic, and thought-provoking novel. Copyright 2024 Booklist Reviews.
Library Journal Reviews
Freudenberger (Lost and Wanted) has racked up numerous accolades, including a Guggenheim fellowship, a Whiting Award, and a PEN/Malamud Award. Her latest novel, set in French Polynesia and New York City, is a heart-wrenching tale that considers race, class, and family as three characters experience a life-changing year during the COVID pandemic. Prepub Alert. Copyright 2023 Library Journal
Copyright 2023 Library Journal.
Publishers Weekly Reviews
Freudenberger (Lost and Wanted) offers a layered story of race and privilege set against the backdrop of Covid-19 lockdowns. Pia, 15, has been raised since her parents' divorce five years ago on the island of Mo'orea in French Polynesia by her marine biologist mother, Nathalie. Now, in fall 2020, Pia's sent to live with her father, Stephen, a cardiologist in New York City, where, with Covid case numbers decreasing and the lockdown lifting, Nathalie hopes she will get some much needed "socialization of her peers." Stephen lives with his younger, pregnant wife, high school teacher Kate, whose relationship with Pia starts off strained. Meanwhile, one of Kate's students, Athyna, who is Black, takes care of her toddler nephew full-time while trying to complete her senior year remotely in Staten Island. The eventual friendship between Pia and Athyna provides an opportunity for Freudenberger to explore the girls' varying experience of the pandemic due to racial and class differences, as when Athyna joins the family in the Hamptons and Pia urges her to say she's Pia's friend to anyone who asks where she lives. Freudenberger's longtime fans will find all the probing social insights and well-drawn characters they've come to expect from this accomplished author. (Apr.)
Copyright 2024 Publishers Weekly.