Zack

May 31, 1999
Canadian author Bell (Crabbe's Journey) offers a unique and sometimes discomfiting perspective on racism in an issue-driven story narrated by a mixed-race teen. Zack Lane, the son of a Mississippi-born black woman and a Canadian man of Romanian Jewish descent, has managed more or less to fit in, until his family moves from Toronto to semirural, all-white Fergus, Ont. Zack misses big-city life and does poorly at his new high school, jeopardizing his chances of going to college. Worse, the girl he likes stands by when her cousin hurls a racial slur. But things change when he unearths an 18th-century dispatch case and, in the course of an extra-credit history project, discovers that it belonged to a former African slave who fought in the Revolution. Zack then decides to dig into his own history and drives to Natchez to meet his estranged grandfather. On his journey south, Zack comes face-to-face with bigotry, not least his grandfather's all-consuming hatred of whites. Readers will likely forgive the contrivances in the plot and the not especially nuanced social commentary. Zack may be the only character who rises above typing, but he narrates energetically and with a charismatic insight, and teens will like his smart, independent voice. Ages 12-up.