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Sienna and her younger brother Siddhartha (Siddhi) are growing up with little parental interaction. Their mother overdosed when they were too young even to know her, and all Sienna has of her are five Polaroids and a strong desire to have something like a normal family. Their father, Jackson, lives life as a cultlike figure surrounded by hippies, and later hard-core addicts, who are drawn to his charisma, free love, and his unconventional drug-fueled lifestyle. The children are witnesses to all kinds of depravity but cling to their love for and belief in each other. Sienna spends her youth hoping that one of her dad's new girlfriends will become a good mother to them. As she gets older, she starts looking to boys for emotional worth. She ends up leaving Siddhi behind and following her boyfriend to Africa. Meanwhile, Siddhi knows it's time he stops letting Sienna mother him and starts finding release in both cutting and pot. He makes friends with a skater named Travis and enters that counterculture. It isn't long before he is introduced to the rest of Travis' group, including the rich, smart, and unhinged leader, Fox. Not long after, both Sienna's and Siddhi's escapes will come crashing down around them.
Wallack's debut reads a lot like a memoir and will remind many of some recent titles. However, two classics keep surfacing in odd ways while reading this book. The first is Golding's The Lord of the Flies. It may seem like an odd connection, but considering the anarchy both on the island and in the lives of the two main characters, the comparisons kept coming. Most relevant of these is the theme of how a microcosm of society can quickly degenerate into chaos. The children in both books are confronted with morality and hedonism at an age when they're not capable of fully understanding them. The result is an early loss of innocence that the characters in Wallack's book, at least, may never comprehend. In another sense, the character of Sienna has parallels with Holden Caulfield from Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. Both have trouble fitting in with others their age and often must act a little phony to themselves to assimilate. Each character deals awkwardly with their sexuality, and both have trouble seeing the adult world as anything other than a fake promise. In addition, each story features a strong attachment to a younger sibling, which causes the character to feel protective and like they want to save that sibling, or at least other people. These corresponding characters from the two novels are remarkably similar after one look's past the surface details.
Wallack's writing is sharp and professional. She has a knack for knowing when to lighten the heavy elements and when to add a couple of sentences of gravity into a seemingly meaningless scene or conversation. The book has several places where a reader will likely underline a two- or three-sentence section. There is so much wrong in the lives of her characters, and yet she still makes them believable and easy to connect with the reader. The pluck, or tenacity, these siblings have in the face of the world's indifference makes the reader want to see them overcome all their obstacles and find, in want of a better word, normalcy. This is an easy book to recommend and will make a great summer read.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review
A 2025 Eric Hoffer Book Award Grand Prize Short List book, the E-Book Fiction Category First Runner-Up, and a First Horizon Finalist