EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE UNIVERSE

It’s 1971, and the Vietnam War has upended Lucy Rossi’s life; when her Army doctor dad returns an amputee, the unsettling changes intensify.

After her dad shipped out, Lucy, 12, and her mom moved from Chicago to San Jose, California, close to his eccentric, loving Italian-American family. Lucy still hasn’t made friends. She treasures the small rocks her dad encloses in his letters and longs for his return. But he arrives home changed: He won’t use his prosthesis and rebuffs her attempts to help; he talks to her mom in private but shuts Lucy out. She finds solace in her friendship with another newcomer, Milo, whose dad’s still in Vietnam. Finding an unknown soldier’s discarded helmet, photos, and Purple Heart, they decide to identify and locate him and deliver the items to his family. Along the way, they’re welcomed at an informal refuge for veterans but turned away from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion, where Vietnam veterans are despised. As her dad’s condition worsens and the hunt stalls, friends and family teach Lucy to value human connections she’s dismissed. Lyrically written, the novel portrays the war’s corrosive, divisive impacts with compassion but skirts the harder issue of those within and outside the military who resisted a war they saw as wrong. Major characters are white; two memorable secondary characters are African-American.

A touching, memorable read that explores the costs, large and small, of an unpopular war.