18 October 2010 SOMETHING LIKE HOPE by Shawn Goodman, Delacorte, December 2010, 208p., ISBN: 978-0-385-73939-9; Libr. ISBN: 978-0-385-90786-6 

"Some day I'll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me"

-- Arlen/Harburg, "Over the Rainbow"

"I wrap my arms around myself even though I'm not cold.  I try to focus my mind on something good, but it's hard.  After a while, I find a good memory. 

"It's a warm summer evening, the kind of weather you get before a thunderstorm, when the air is so still and you can almost feel electricity in it.  And there's the sweet heavy smell of ozone.  All these business people are hurrying to get home before the rain because they have expensive dry-clean-only suits that shouldn't get wet.  And their hair, with all the styling gel and mousse in it, will get messed up, too.  But my mom isn't hurrying.  She's holding my hand and we're walking slowly, like we don't care where we're going or when we'll get there.

"I think I'm happy, because there's no knot in my stomach, no fear of what will come next.  I feel warm and good and safe.  I skip along to keep up with my mother's long easy strides.  She swings my arm and sings, 'I can see clearly now the rain is gone.'

"Her voice is beautiful and clear.  She sings out loud to me and to everyone around us, like we're stars on a movie set.  But really she's singing for me, because she loves me.  Even if it's just for the moment, even if it's just because she's high on crack and feeling good, my mother loves me.  She sings, 'It's gonna be a bright, bright, sunshiny day.'  And I love her back.  I squeeze her hand in return because, for this single moment in time, I love her too."

Seventeen year-old Shavonne has so far experienced a nightmarish life.  Abused every which way, she had a baby before she was sixteen.  The baby was immediately taken away and put into the foster care system, while Shavonne then spent the next five weeks in the psych ward.  

Now it's going on two years later, and if she continues on her currently trajectory, she will likely transition from juvenile detention into the adult system and a judicial determination can instantly and permanently sever her already nearly imperceptible from-a-distance interaction with her daughter Jasmine, as each of them occupies their own respective place in The System. 

SOMETHING LIKE HOPE is the story that is framed around the conversations that Shavonne begins having with Mr. Delpopolo, her latest psychologist.  The ill-sighted and overweight Mr. Delpopolo, as we come to find, has plenty of his own personal challenges.  But thanks to his honesty and abilities -- particularly in helping her see that what adults have done to her is not her fault -- Shavonne finds herself feeling safer and safer in opening up to him and, therefore, might actually have a chance to steer her life away from its current course. 

That is, if she can safely navigate the rest of the adults who work in the facility and have power over her:

"Ms. Choi glares at me with evil crazy eyes.  She's made a half-assed attempt to put herself together, but the effect is grotesque: lipstick and mascara applied in thick uneven strokes.  Maybe her hand is unsteady from drinking or not sleeping.  I don't know.  But she's staring at me, smiling.  It's a predator's smile, like a hyena's.  I saw a hyena at a zoo once.  It had gone insane.  Its pen was too small and it paced endlessly.  Ms. Choi isn't doing anything like that.  She sits perfectly still, but the grin is the same as the crazy hyena's.

"She points to a desk chair in front of her and says, 'Sit.'" 

SOMETHING LIKE HOPE is a high-interest tale that will have readers wondering how things could possibly get this screwed up...and how Shavonne might get beyond those clouds.  First-time author Shawn Goodman draws on his own experiences as a psychologist working in a girls juvenile justice facility to repeatedly portray in vivid and heartbreaking detail the various girls who, along with Shavonne, are stuck in the juvenile facility with few tools and fewer hopes.        

Richie Partington, MLIS
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