TITLE: We Are Called to Rise
AUTHOR: Laura McBride
GENRE: General Fiction
PUBLISHED: June 3, 2014
RATING: ★★★★★
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon.com
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism
Description: Three lives are bound together by a split-second mistake, and a child’s fate hangs in the balance.
What happens next will test—and restore—your faith in humanity.
Far from the neon lights of the Vegas strip, three lives are about to collide. A middle aged woman attempting to revive her marriage. A returning soldier waking up in a hospital with no memory of how he got there. A very brave eight-year-old immigrant boy.
This is a story about families—the ones we have and the ones we make. It’s a story about America today, where so many cultures and points of view collide and coexist. We Are Called to Rise challenges us to think about our responsibilities to each other and reminds us that no matter how cruel life can be in a given moment, it is ultimately beautiful to live, and live fully.
Review: What an incredible and emotionally-charged novel. I had this on my Kindle's spindle for awhile; honestly, I had no idea what the book was about, just that it had an appealing title and an eye-catching cover. From its first page, I was captivated and intrigued. I quickly learned that Laura McBride is an instructor at a community college in the Las Vegas desert, but surely her prodigious talent is wasted there.
McBride starts her novel with a poem...
We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies—
- Emily Dickinson
McBride uses the title and the poem as both foreshadowing and explanation of what is to come. Four unrelated residents of Las Vegas - of different ages, races, and backgrounds - are introduced in alternating chapters. This writing technique is one that is used with varying success in many novels. I've read many novels with alternating viewpoints but this is one of the first I've found where I've been invested in every story and every character. McBride easily switches characters without causing the reader to skip ahead to read about the favored character.
The character of Avis is introduced first. Middle aged and listless, her husband, Jim, is leaving her for a younger woman. She has a 27 year old son, Nate, a veteran and cop. While learning about Avis and her life, we learn she had a daughter who died a long time ago. She reviews her married life; some of her recollections are poignant and heart-rending. Get ready for some tears, they will well up several times during this story...
The ice cream drips along his ear and down his neck, and before she has eaten half of it, Emily has dropped the whole soggy thing on his head. And then she puts her hands in his hair, lays her cheek on the ice cream, and says, as clear and sweet as those ice-cream truck chimes, “Good daddy.”
So what can he do? Except walk around in the heat with a cream-streaked child on his head, blue and yellow stripes dripping down his shirt, and me laughing.
And later, just weeks later, when Emily’s fever hasn’t responded to the Tylenol, when we have raced to the ER, when the nurse has plunged her in a tub of water, when the fever will not abate, when the doctor says it is meningitis, when he says it sometimes comes on fast like this, when thirty-seven hours and twenty-eight minutes and a hundred million infinite seconds pass, when Emily lies there, tiny in the ICU bed, her breathing labored, then faint, then fluttery (like a little bird), then gone, then a single heart-stopping gasp, and then, again, gone. And no gasp. Later, after all of it, I am so glad we bought that ice-cream treat.
And with that first squeeze to the heart (don't worry, there will be more!), the chapter comes to an end. In the next chapter, we meet Bashkim, an 8 year old Albanian immigrant and his parents (his "Baba" and "Nene") and younger sister. I admit Bashkim might be my favorite; he is adorable. Wise beyond his years, yet completely age appropriate, he tries desperately not to be different or make waves in any way - he stole my heart.
We also meet Luis, a wounded soldier with PTSD who wakes up in a hospital after an apparent suicide attempt. Bashkim and Luis are the two characters who are connected first. Bashkim gets to know Luis a bit before Luis even realizes it. One day Luis' doctor gently asks about a letter he may have received recently...
“Yes, Luis, you got a letter. From a young boy in Las Vegas. It was a school project in his third-grade class, I believe. To write to soldiers from Nevada.”
I don't remember. I don't remember anything about this letter. And I am wondering why Dr. Ghosh is bringing it up. What difference it makes. Last Christmas, we got boxes of stuff from people in Las Vegas. The Blue Ribbon Moms sent us stockings filled with coffee and licorice and socks.
“The thing is, Luis, you got a letter from this little boy. And you answered him. You wrote him a letter back, and you put it in the post. And then you shot yourself.”
So that’s why Dr. Ghosh is interested in that letter. Because I wrote the boy back. What did I write to him? I can’t remember anything about this. What would I have written? Did I send a suicide note to an eight-year-old kid?
Each character writes a chapter, but they are not distributed evenly between the characters, nor are they in any particular order; which is good, as some characters have more to say. The novel continues; Avis deals with the end of her marriage, Bashkim goes to school, and Luis makes progress with his physical injuries and faces the reality of his PTSD and memories of war.
Then we are introduced to a fourth character, Roberta, a social worker in Las Vegas. Roberta is the character we readers know the least, but she takes on the all important job of setting the scene in Las Vegas; very clearly we can feel the heat and smell the hot rocks and sagebrush of the desert...
One thing about a desert: it accentuates certain distinctions. If you live in one of the master-planned communities shoved up against the red rock hills or set down in a natural basin with an artificial lake at the center, then you might spend the ordinary moments of your life with palm trees fringing your view of the sky, with green grass abutting tended walking paths, with flower beds that are unearthed and replaced monthly, with artfully lighted pools that appear to magically slip into the horizon. Such resort-like luxuries are everywhere in a town that has an abundance both of cheap labor and of people who know how fantasies are created.
But the desert is unforgiving to the indigent. It offers no relief from the harsh landscape of unplanted, dusty yards, of blowing trash, of peeling, sunburned wood siding, of cheap tilt-up concrete walls, of wires sagging between rough-hewn wooden poles, of potholes and graffiti and men curled in the foot-wide shadows cast by faded, abandoned campaign signs. Without water, there are no leaves, no trees, no bushes, no meadows, no fields, no loamy dirt rich with life to soften the barren ugliness of Las Vegas’s poorest communities.
Can you imagine how they all - these separate characters and their stories - converge and meet, how their lives finally intersect, there in the unforgiving, scorching desert sun? At first, I couldn't, but McBride could - and she paces her story so steadily, but so gently, that everything falls into place with seamless and silent clicks.
A few months remain of 2014, but I know already this novel will be one of the best books I've read this year. Each character is fully drawn, vibrant, and unforgettable.
I recommend this book for all readers, but particularly women. And for those readers who live in the desert; McBride gets the Vegas resident vibe just right. Men will enjoy the story as well due to the two military characters and stories of war. But beware guys - this one is a tearjerker. 5 big stars.