Twelve-year-old David "Green" Greenfeld is one of only two white kids in his South Boston school. Narrator of Sam Graham-Felsen's first novel, Green, he speaks a hip-hop patois with self-conscious concern that he not sound as uncool as his skin color suggests he is: "Awesome is a Caucasian catastrophe." His parents are Harvard-grad former hippies who won't send him to a private school because they "believe" in public schools. Green is a coming-of-age story set in the '90s, about a white boy trying to fit in among his black peers.
In time, Green makes friends with Marlon, a shy kid from the projects who is a curious reader and has a premier collection of video highlights from Celtics games. With a rarely discussed family life at home, Marlon prefers to hang at Green's place, where his parents dote and encourage both boys to study hard for the admission test for Boston Latin School, the prestigious public school from which acceptance into Harvard is almost assured. But this is a novel about adolescent boys growing into manhood. Hitting the books is way down their priority list, below standing up to violent bullies and figuring out how sex works. As Green laments, "You turn my age and you can never be soft again."
Journalist, Columbia MFA graduate and former chief blogger for the 2008 Obama campaign, Graham-Felsen is after more than a Tom Sawyer take on adolescence. Green tackles the nuances of how class and race throw up inflexible barriers preventing a healthy integration of a diverse population. Funny and on the money, Green is a perceptive first novel. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.