This Side of Providence

February 8, 2016
In her second novel, Harper (Brass Ankle Blues) focuses on a young family living in a derelict neighborhood in Providence, R.I., in the late 1990s. Arcelia fled Puerto Rico with her young daughter, Luz, to escape her history of physical and sexual abuse. Her son, Cristo, joins her later, but Arcelia falls into drug and alcohol addiction as well as prostitution. In the tense opening scene, Arcelia is pursued by the police and lands in prison for several months, leaving 11-year-old Cristo to try to hold the rest of the family together without landing on the wrong side of the law himself. Aided by his fourth-grade teacher Miss Valentín and the family’s enigmatic landlord, Snowman, both of whom have their own motivations for becoming attached to the boy, street-smart Cristo is clearly as bright as his book-smart younger sister, and his pursuit of fulfilling emotional relationships hints at a more positive future. Chapters are narrated by Cristo, Arcelia, Luz, Miss Valentín, and a handful of others in credible voices, although the prose lacks nuance, heavily broadcasting the thematic heft of certain passages. Hope is hard-won here, but the story of Arcelia’s family is powerful.

February 1, 2016
The consequences of poverty and a mother's addiction reverberate through her family and their community. When we first meet Arcelia, she's running from the police with her youngest child, 3-year-old Trini, in her arms. She can't run forever, though; soon she's arrested on charges related to drugs and prostitution. All three of her children watch as she's led away in handcuffs, left to contend with a world of hunger, solitude, and fear of social services. The Perez family often feels as if it's perched on the brink of destruction, surviving rather than living. The novel is told through a number of different narrators, including Arcelia, her 11-year-old son, Cristo, and her 10-year-old-daughter, Luz. Cristo's chapters are perhaps the most compelling; he struggles with his desire to protect and provide for his family in spite of his age and begins running errands for neighborhood drug dealers. There are times when Cristo's fierce determination and beyond-his-years observations are suddenly subverted by moments of naivete, and we are reminded that in spite of his apparent independence, he is still very much a child. Other narrators are not as successful--for example, Miss Valentin, Cristo's teacher, who's assigned the somewhat cliched role of the caring teacher who sees her students' potential where others do not. As a result, she feels tired on the page and maybe too good to be true. The novel can be a little too exact; overall themes are sometimes explained outright by the characters in ways that undermine their complexity. While there are moments that feel trite, they are almost balanced by moments of honest rage, hope, and vulnerability.

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March 15, 2016

Harper's second novel (after Brass Ankle Blues) tells the gut-wrenching account of Arcelia Perez, who flees Puerto Rico with her three small children to escape a failing marriage and ends up on the wrong side of Providence, RI. Fighting addiction, she lands in jail and goes through the symptoms of withdrawal. When she's released, she must learn how to cope with the world, all while trying to reunite her family, which has fallen apart in her absence. Told in alternating viewpoints, Harper's novel looks at multiple facets of a family: the struggling mother, the unavailable father, the three young children, and the teacher who becomes their mother figure. VERDICT While a dense read, this powerful story about what it means to be a family and the struggles members endure to stay together will appeal to fans of Vanessa Diffenbaugh, Heather Gudenkauf, and dramatic family-centric fiction.--Mara Dabrishus, Ursuline Coll. Lib., Pepper Pike, OH

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