Chanticleer Book Reviews

Tag: Social & Family Issues

THE ROUND PRAIRIE WARS by Aden Ross – Historical Fiction, Cold War, Social & Family Issues

On the wind-swept plains of 1950s Nebraska, nine-year-old Jeb Wilder wages a campaign against the boredom that stretches longer than summer days, fends off local bullies, and navigates the uneasy terrain of a family coming apart at the seams. In The Round Prairie Wars, Aden Ross turns these small, familiar struggles into something much larger—a portrait of a childhood shaped by the echoes of distant conflicts.

As Jeb makes sense of her own “wars” at home, the shadow of World War II and the Cold War’s anxious hum linger in the background.

Jeb and Sam, her older brother, play games pretending to be pilots in a crippled WWII dive bomber in an imaginary unit they call “back-to-back.” This metaphor exemplifies their reliance on one another whenever they escape their confined, impoverished life in their small trailer house called Prairie Schooner.

Stories of war grip the parents as much as their children. When the family attends an outdoor showing of The Day the Earth Stood Still, the film acts as a litmus test for the parents’ fears, revealing deep ideological fissures running through their home.

The family’s first Sunday at a Methodist church leaves young Jeb confused and heartbroken at the perversion of the pulpit.

This institution that Jeb had trusted to spearhead faith and hope unmasks itself as a platform for political fear-mongering and hypocrisy. The Reverend’s sermon is less a theological lesson than a diatribe against “godless communists.” Jeb can only seek moral and intellectual guidance elsewhere.

Jeb’s new sanctuary is a place of freedom and acceptance, where books provide truth beyond any sermon.

One such book carries a familiar smell. It reminds Jeb of her brother’s paranoid warning about a key figure in their life who can build far more than just bicycles. Sam’s words cease to be a childish theory and now become a chilling possibility that leaves Jeb unable to trust the assumptions of her small, fragile world. She begins to wonder if the real enemies aren’t out there among the communists, or even the local bullies, but are instead much closer to home.

Ross builds this vivid, complex world upon a deep foundation of metaphor.

The characters are well-hewn individuals, embodying nuanced themes around the ideological civil war of 1950s America. They not only experience their own immediate struggles but are vessels of pain inherited from history, family, and societal trauma—often without being fully understood. The world of the novel is anything but simple, and these characters help chart the complex, universal forces every child must decipher along the path to adulthood.

Ross’s exploration of the Cold War era through the lens of a young child makes the sprawling anxieties of the time into something intimate, tangible, and terrifyingly powerful.

She grounds the story in a confined space with barely any escape from family tensions. This domestic stage plays out the nation’s conflict, where ideological battles and personal trauma clash in whispered arguments.

The Round Prairie Wars by Aden Ross speaks with a voice burdened by echoes from the past. A testament to childhood caught in the gears of history, Jeb’s story honors conflict lived not in headlines but in the hushed, terrified, and wonderfully resilient hearts that endure it. The perfect read for those who cherish history from the ground up, as well as those who seek to capture the true sense of a time of personal and societal uncertainty.

December 1, 2025
ABOMINATION CHILD by Erika Shepard – LGBT Fiction, 1960s, Social & Family Issues

Abomination Child is a coming-of-age novel, a piece of historical fiction, and a lesson to us all. Erika Shepard tells the story of Brianna, a young girl growing up in Missouri during the 1960s, struggling to be accepted.

Within her community, Brianna is seen on the outside as a boy, and everyone knows her as Brian. She confides in her older sister Liz, who supports her and helps her face a world that doesn’t understand. Spanning many years, Abomination Child follows Brianna’s journey of survival, hoping that one day she’ll be able to live freely as herself.

Brianna’s – known then as Brian – troubles start after his father learns that he dressed in girl’s clothes at a school Halloween dance. Deeply conservative and religious, Brian’s father hits him for what he believes is an abominable perversion caused by the Devil. For Brian, it’s as simple as knowing he is really a girl, a girl named Brianna.

But just being Brianna is not that simple. Besides Liz, no one else understands, so Brian has little choice but to remain Brian to survive a bigoted world. As he enters adolescence, Brian slowly gains a few other allies who help him through his darkest moments until the day Brianna can become a reality.

Shepard doesn’t shy away from the realistic experience of Brianna’s life.

Brian lives through a difficult and authentic adolescence. As he finds varying degrees of understanding from those around him, he must work through his own confusion about his emerging identity. Readers’ hearts will go out to Brian as he struggles, nearly alone.

Brian’s mother has an affecting journey of her own. At first, she feels she’s failed as a mother, saddened at the truth of her daughter. But she works through her fears and does the research to understand Brian and accept Brianna. Shepard expertly captures the truth and complexity of one family member learning to accept another.

Despite being set in decades past, Abomination Child shows why affirmative care and support systems are essential in our world today.

The multiple perspectives in this story offer a thoughtful view to the difficulties faced by each character.

Only seeing Brian’s thoughts throughout the novel would not be the entire story. Abomination Child shows the growth – or lack thereof – in each family member. There are some questions left unanswered by the end of the story, and that too is true to life. Brian’s story might end here, but Brianna’s is just beginning.

Many people have stories like Brianna’s. Some end happily, while many others don’t. Abomination Child considers that even when happiness seems impossible, things may one day change for the better, and you should stick around for that chance to be your true self.

March 31, 2023
A DOCTOR a DAY: A Novel (EveryDoctor Series, Book 1) by Bernard Mansheim, M.D. – Literary Fiction, Medical, Social & Family Issues

A behind-the-scenes look at the life of a medical doctor, from med school to internship to private practice to the courtroom and beyond.

Dr. Luke James is in private practice. He has a loving wife and young daughter, and in some ways, his work brings joy and affirmation. But when he started his long journey through the healing profession, he knew there would be times when all his efforts would end in the loss of a patient. As this intensely emotional story opens, Dr. James is in court, defending himself in a malpractice suit in which, as the prosecutor accuses, “You let your patient die.” Told in flashbacks, we see how the lawsuit is calling into question many of the ideals the physician once cherished. He recalls crucial incidents from his fraught, exhausting, sometimes depressing, sometimes uplifting days of doctoring, the many times when his judgment might have prevented — or resulted in — the death of a patient in critical condition.

As he watches patients die, their last moments provide a profound reminder of the swiftness of death—” like flipping off a switch.” Yet Dr. James will continue to offer words of comfort and try daring remedies. Once he even donated his own blood in hope of a miracle cure for one of his patents. He thinks that the practice of medicine is an art and a craft that must be honed and believes that even the science of medicine inexorably dictates its own terms. As he remembers his work life in all its complex aspects, Dr. James ponders his decision for the patient whose demise is the focus of the malpractice trial. Was he “playing God?” Did he rob the patient of her right to a longer life, even though that would have been a life of an unconscious mind and a body riddled with tubes, unhealable wounds, and deterioration?

Author, and former practicing physician, Bernard Mansheim has fictionalized the duties and dichotomies of his own experience as a doctor so starkly that there can be no doubt of his deep connection to the questions posed and the answers sought by Luke James. Mansheim started his education with a BA in English Literature, and there is also no doubt of his ability to compose a gripping saga that tears away any blinders we might have had about the glamour of a doctor’s life.

At one point, Mansheim’s hero realizes he can’t allow himself to cry and begins to build an inner wall to hide some of his worst fears and sorrows, creating a backlog of unexamined depression. In an author’s note, Mansheim states that the suicide rate among doctors is 50% greater than that of the general population. It is known that a doctor a day commits suicide. This dismal trend has followed since 1858. His story boldly reveals some possible reasons for that grim statistic, while leaving room for hope for his embattled protagonist and others like him. This novel lays the foundation for discourse about this public health crisis and may be one of the most important books that you could read this year.

January 24, 2018
The FLYING BURGOWSKI by Gretchen Wing – YA, Social & Family Issues, Fantasy

In many ways, Gretchen K. Wing’s protagonist in The Flying Burgowski, Jocelyn Burgowski (Joss, for short) is a typical teenager. She admires and appreciates a favorite teacher, argues with her older brother, Michael (in an awkward rebellious stage), and hangs out with her friends, the popular Savannah and the sweet social misfit, Louis. She loves to relax with a good book, usually one in the Harry Potter series. The third is her favorite.

Then there are the atypical aspects of Joss’s life. She lives off the coast of Washington, on Dalby Island, beautiful with its tall fir trees and surrounding water, although not a mall or a MacDonald’s in sight. Her father runs the all-purpose store and shocks his children when he abruptly marries Lorraine, the seemingly stereotypical librarian. Joss’s mother abandoned the family nine years earlier for mainland life and has struggled with alcoholism and pill addiction.

And then there’s Joss’s very vivid dreams, dreams in which she takes flight and soars over the island. Unlike Harry Potter, she doesn’t need a broom. No, she flies as freely as a bird. On her fourteenth birthday, which occurs on the summer solstice, she discovers that the dreams were preparation for the real thing. She instinctively takes off from The Toad, a large rock on the island, and life will never be the same. How could it? Even if she and Michael (in trouble again for driving his father’s truck into a ditch and smoking pot) weren’t sent to the mainland to spend time with their mother, Joss’s life is forever on a new course, one that is mapped against the sky.

To Wing’s enormous credit, the novel never loses its convincing realism despite the main character’s spending a good portion of it in the sky, her arms outstretched, her body turning as she banks left and right, her lungs filling with the scent of lilies. The author weaves these scenes seamlessly, beautifully into the narrative. We root for Joss as she plans her flight sessions, catch our breath when she takes a rough landing, her skin scraped, and worry with her that she’ll be sighted by someone who happens to look up at the evening sky. The realism is complemented, however, by the exhilaration of these scenes. Joss is so thrilled by the experience of flight that the reader wants to take her hand and witness what she does as a human bird, to feel that rush of air swim against our skin.

Joss’s gift for flight, of course, is mired in old and interesting secrets that involve her mother and even her new step-mother. Her aerial talent is tested when she adjusts to a new school, unkind classmates, her mother’s substance abuse relapses, and the surprising but welcome maturation of her brother. Wing’s poignant and sensitive handling of Joss’s and Michael’s time on the mainland underscores the protective power of sibling relationships in the face of parental weakness or failure. The self-growth that they experience as a result stays with them when they return to Dalby Island and resume life as they knew it, but with far greater self-awareness.

The Flying Burgowski isn’t your typical young adult book and that’s a very good thing. Wing infuses realistic teen life, with all its problems, with a hefty dose of magic realism, and the result is an engaging and captivating fusion. After reading it, don’t be surprised if you find yourself looking up at the sky, ready to sight the lucky human endowed with the gift of flight.

June 15, 2017