NOTHING TO FEAR

An involving account of the Great Depression as endured by the Irish-American Garveys. Narrator Daniel is barely into adolescence when the story opens, but has a man-sized concern for his ma and pa and baby Maureen. He shines shoes for 3õ; his mother takes in laundry; desperate to find work, his father leaves in the fall of 1933 and they never see him again. Like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, this evokes the sounds and sights of a poor neighborhood in hard times, conjuring an entire era from the heartaches and troubles of one struggling family. (The parallel is also apparent in the plot; Danny, like Francie, sees his mother remarried before the story ends.) The poverty seems devastatingly real, even in the snug corners of comfort the Garveys and their neighbors carve from small blessings. Rich, rewarding historical fiction.~(Fiction. 10+)