A Book Review Starring "Hold Tight, Don't Let Go" by Laura Rose Wagner

The short version:
In the aftermath of the devastating 2010 Haiti earthquake that destroys their home and kills their mother, 16 year old Magdalie and her "sister" Nadine must live with their uncle in a makeshift camp. When Nadine's American father sends for her, Nadine sort of promises to send for Magdalie. Left essentially on her own for the first time in her life, unable to attend school anymore, Magdalie must adapt to a new way of life while searching for a way to make money so she can join Nadine in America.

The long version:
How long ago must an historical event have occurred to constitute it being the basis for a novel of historical fiction?

I want to call this historical fiction (and I mean that in the best of ways) even though it takes place just five years ago. Wagner does an excellent job of integrating not only the larger events of the earthquake but the daily minutia of life after the earthquake into the narrative of the story. Sometimes when you read historical fiction you get that kitchen-sink feeling that the author was so jazzed to learn his or her stuff that she threw it all in the book. But there is a nice sense of restraint here, Wagner illustrates the devastation of the earthquake as it appears to this 16 year old girl, not in any overwritten, all-encompassing encyclopedic way. She's able to express the craziness and devastation, but also the tedium of having nowhere to go and nothing to do, no jobs or home to attend to.

Aspects of the narrative felt like a first novel. Some of the plot points were very pointed, not terribly nuanced, but still effective. Later in the novel there's a pleasant romance subplot that doesn't feel entirely necessary.

But none of those things detract from the novel overall, in which Wagner has created an engaging main character whom you want to follow and see what happens to her all the while getting an intimate look into a part of the world that feels so far away.

Quite a commendable first novel, particularly given such a large undertaking of melding a traditional narrative with historical events set in (what was for me) an unfamiliar culture.