Watch Over Me

August 3, 2009
Parrish (Home Another Way
) has a lot going on in this story: Benjamin Patil, an Indian-American deputy sheriff in a small South Dakota town who is troubled after a tour of duty in Afghanistan, finds an abandoned baby. He talks his wife, Abbi, a vegetarian war protester and potter, into foster parenting, although their marriage has been troubled since Ben returned from the Middle East, where his best friend was killed in action and he was injured. Then there's the subplot, involving Matthew, a deaf teenager on kidney dialysis living with his trailer-trash aunt and her four daughters because she offers more stability than his drunken mother, dad (a potential kidney donor) being out of the picture. Parrish makes a lot of the complications work, even with a few too many social issues (PTSD, bulimia, alcoholism, broken families, abandoned infants, political dissent, alternative lifestyles). Ben and Abbi are well-drawn and compelling characters, but the sprawling plotting makes the book superficial as it tries to do too much. Parrish is a fine writer and should keep it simple for greater impact.