Solo by Kwame Alexander and Mary Rand Hess (review)

As the son of a famous rock star, seventeen-year-old Blade lives in the constant shade of his father's subsequent addictions and public humiliations. His sister is willing to forgive his father and wants to take up the rock star mantle herself, but for Blade, music is more the raft that keeps him afloat until his girlfriend cheats on him and he finds out that he is adopted. He smashes his guitar and takes off to find his birth mother in the remote village in Ghana where she has been working for the past ten years. Before he can get to her, though, his father arrives with a flashy bus, a cameraman, and a plan to do what it takes to reset his career and win back his son's trust. Alexander and Hess take their time developing Blade's character through first-person free-verse poems that occasionally quote lyrics from rock, blues, and soul music, appropriate for a boy whose expectations about life and love are remixed from multiple musical genres. Readers will see what he doesn't—that the true love he is banking on to save him is a figment of his romantic imagination, and that no matter how far he tries to run from who he is, music will always be his first and best home. All of the poems have a simple, pleasing cadence, with interesting bits of rock trivia built into a few, while some, including one homage to heartbreak and another to Ghana and the welcoming community he finds there, are breathtakingly beautiful standalones. Readers will want to make a playlist using the songs Blade references as he finds redemption through new loves, new griefs, and a new reason to make music.