Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 07/01/2024 *Starred Review* On the eve of the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S., Enzo learns that his father, Chris, has arranged for Enzo’s grandfather to stay in their house out of fear of infection. Decades earlier, Chris is a young man in the early 1980s and is forced to end a promising football career when his father, Emil, punishes him for missing a school assignment. Several years prior, Emil toils in near poverty, earning just enough money cleaning restaurant tables for him and his mother to eat while Francisco, his father, disappears for months on end. At the beginning of this multigenerational saga, a teenage Francisco toils in the orchards of California, a new immigrant fighting disillusionment in a supposed land of plenty. Entwined and exquisite like a taut braid, the narrative expertly weaves the lives of these fathers and sons into a powerful family drama centered on one family's Filipino American experience. Even more impressive than Ribay’s ability to balance four separate point-of-view characters is the way the story immerses the reader in each character’s time period. Whether depicting the anomie of the recent pandemic, the activism-charged atmosphere of the 1960s, or the tough lives of farm laborers enduring exploitation for a dream of prosperity, Ribay vividly and honestly brings these settings to life so the reader can better understand how the characters’ worlds shape them. - Copyright 2024 Booklist.