BEING CLEM

The highly anticipated conclusion to Cline-Ransome’s Finding Langston trilogy.

Small but smart, Clemson Thurber Jr. has acquired resilience from dealing with his two teenage sisters, who barely tolerate him. Now 9, Clem has lost his father in San Francisco’s 1944 Port Chicago Disaster that killed 320 sailors, most of them Black, who were loading ammunition onto ships. Because of Chicago’s employment discrimination, Clem’s widowed mother works as a domestic to a White family despite her college education. Although Clem believes his mother wants him to follow his Daddy into the Navy, he must face his utter terror of swimming; the water makes him think of his father’s death. Clem befriends a music-loving school bully—the eponymous protagonist of Leaving Lymon (2020)—and appreciates the protection that grants, but when “Country Boy” Langston of Finding Langston (2018) becomes Lymon’s target, Clem starts doubting the ethics of tormenting nice kids. A fight over a book and the discovery of their mutual love of the library seal Clem and Langston’s friendship. A sensitive, bookish budding geographer and cartographer, Clem ultimately honors the moral compass his parents have instilled in him. Like the other two entries, this novel with its parallel narrative addresses tough situations with care, including parental grief and depression, the threat of eviction, domestic abuse, the emotional and physical abuse of children, the impact of racism, and negotiating problematic friendships.

A compelling work whose intriguing characters readers will miss when they turn the last page.