Richie's Picks: Great Books for Children and Young Adults

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"Darkness, darkness be my blanket,
Cover me with endless night."
-- Jesse Colin Young

"Don't die, don't die, don't die. Can't you hear me? You can't die when we're doing all we can to save you.
"A few more minutes pass. The doctor tells me to stop. 'Still no pulse without CPR,' Guthrie says finally.
"The doctor breathes in deep and lets it out slow. 'Let's call it.' He removes his gloves, his face mask, his gown. He slams them into the trash. 'We can't do anything more.' He frowns and his big brown eyes glisten in the bright light.
"I don't want to stop. I want to tell the girl I'm sorry she's dead and won't ever go to college, or fall in love, or do anything she ever dreamed of doing. I'm sorry she won't ever be able to get mad over something stupid. I'm sorry, but we gave everything we had to give.
" 'Thank you,' Dr. Murphy tells us. 'For all your help.'
"I stand there and listen. All I can hear is a buzz from a machine. All I can see is the dead girl. She fills the room even though she's just a small, still body on the metal table.
" 'I can't do this right now,' Guthrie says. 'I'll be back in a few minutes to finish up.' I pull the sheet over the girl. I won't leave her there lying naked. On the way out, I leave the door cracked just in case there really is a soul and it needs to escape.
"I step into the waiting room in time to hear the wailing of the girl's mother, her father's anguish. Head down, I start thinking about Michelle, about Joey, about myself -- and it hits me. What right do I have to be so pissed about how they treated me? Everything that's happened with them seems as important as bird droppings when a teenage girl dies in front of you."

Clay Gardener, Med Tech One, is the youngest employee in a Georgia hospital. Nearly eighteen years ago, Clay himself entered the world in a far away hospital in Endurance, Texas, where his mother died giving birth to him.

For the past ten years Clay has been best friend and cycling partner to Joey Chancey. The pair met after the warehouse in Endurance, where Clay's dad had worked, burned to the ground and Clay's dad moved him and his sister to the Georgia town where his dad's old Vietnam War buddy -- Joey's dad -- lives. Clay, who with Joey, graduated from high school last month, has always wanted to be a doctor, but he doesn't have the grades or the money to pursue his dream. Instead, he's doing twelve-hour shifts at the hospital. Joey, the class valedictorian and football hero, is heading to Duke in the fall.

But after Clay gets off the tough shift that was marked by the teen girl's death (after a car accident), he wearily enters the shed in Joey's backyard -- the shed that has always been Clay and Joey's clubhouse and sanctuary -- and finds Joey naked and in a violent, psychotic state. Apparently it has something to do with a party Joey had been at. After an intense struggle in the shed, Clay has to call 911 and soon Joey is on life support at the hospital.

What has happened to the supposedly straight-arrow Joey and what is the deal with Michelle, the girl who was sort of with Clay but who has been coming on strong to Joey?

"Everybody I talk to is ready to leave
With the light of the morning
They've seen the end coming down long enough to believe
That they've heard their last warning"
--Jackson Browne, "For Everyman"

BLOOD BROTHERS is a gritty mystery which is relentless in its pacing because Clay has to sandwich his attempts to figure out what happened to Joey into those all-too-brief periods of time when he is not either working at the hospital or watching his friend's struggle in critical care.

The author's long career working in hospitals, beginning as a teenager, is clearly responsible for the vivid depictions of hospital work -- from the yucky and mundane tasks to the life-and-death climaxes -- which will hold the interest of all but the most squeamish readers. Chalk another one up to the Class of 2K7.

Richie Partington
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