Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 11/01/2013 Stalwart scribe Strasser returns with this strong contemporary effort, a low-key slow-burner about a topic alarmingly underrepresented in modern YA: poverty. Dan, 18, is a promising pitcher with hopes of being drafted early into the big leagues, but the ongoing financial woes of his family suddenly begin to snowball. They lose their home, their car, and their unemployment checks and must move to “Dignityville,” a shantytown erected near town hall to provide the homeless with a safe place to live. If it weren’t bad enough seeing his dad diving through trash, Dan’s situation rots away at his social life as well. His friends behave awkwardly, his girlfriend is embarrassed, and Dan is too tired to do the kind of practice his sport requires. There is a mystery—someone is plotting against Dignityville to turn public opinion against it—and plenty of convincing parallels to The Grapes of Wrath. Behind it all, however, is a simple, sensitive, realistic portrayal of a teen breakup, which more than makes up for occasional purposeful passages. Timely and important material. - Copyright 2013 Booklist.

School Library Journal - 12/01/2013 Gr 7–10—High school senior Dan Halprin is the star pitcher on the baseball team, has been offered a scholarship to Rice University, and is dating wealthy Talia. When his parents lose their jobs as a stockbroker and youth athletics coach, and then their home, the family is forced to move into Dignityville, a tent community in the center of town. Humiliated and angry, Dan struggles to maintain his self-confidence, relationships, and aspirations. When townspeople complain about providing land and services for the homeless, Dignityville becomes a target for threats and violence. Just as Dan begins to understand the attitudes and dreams of other Dignityville residents, he learns that his despondent father has been coerced by Talia's father, a local real-estate magnate, into helping destroy the tent community. In the end, forgiveness, an upturn in work opportunities, and the generosity of neighbors help the Halprins get back on their feet. This compelling social commentary challenges stereotypes about homeless people and offers a look at homelessness from the perspective of a middle-class teen. Diverse characters, easy dialogue, realistic school and community settings, believable tension, and references to John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath fuel Strasser's well-paced, engaging narrative. Coping with their personal financial catastrophe, wanting to stay in their familiar town, finding work, accepting charity, and maintaining self-respect are issues that weigh heavily on Dan and his parents. Readers will be drawn into this contemporary story.—Gerry Larson, formerly at Durham School of the Arts, NC - Copyright 2013 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Bulletin for the Center... - 01/01/2014 Responding to a sharp spike in homelessness, a community mayor establishes a temporary tent village, Dignityville, with basic sanitation, a heated dining tent, and a few electrical generators. This barely registered as a blip on high school senior Dan Halprin’s local news radar until his parents both lost their jobs and the house, and now the family is moving with their camping gear to Dignityville. Dan tries to keep his school life cranking along normally, and he confides his status only to his closest friends, but word leaks out. Pity and charity, he finds, are not easy to take, and even when friends try to include him in activities, he simply can’t afford to run with the old pack. Socializing, however, becomes the least of his worries when a local businessman afraid of declining real estate values has a Dignityville organizer brutally attacked, and then orchestrates an opportunity to destroy the tent village in one stroke. Dan figures out the players in this drama, but that may not be enough to secure justice for his homeless neighbors. The ham-fisted messaging makes the book read more like a polemic than a novel, with characters weighing in on the homeless question as if reading from scripts. Nonetheless, teen readers who recognize that their own families may be just a paycheck or two away from a similar fate may rightly regard this as a gripping horror story, with fall from social grace as terrifying as cold nights and hungry mornings. EB - Copyright 2014 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

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