Every Single Second by Tricia Springstubb (review)

Twelve-year-old Nella Sabatini knows that her Italian grandmother harbors a prejudice, rooted in decades-old racial strife, against the brown-skinned college students who live across the street and the black residents of the neighborhood that borders on Little Italy, but that is a minor embarrassment. Her more urgent difficulties stem from her father’s mysterious past, and the shame she feels for distancing herself from her former best friend, Angela, as the result of Angela’s family troubles. When Angela’s older brother, on whom Nella has always harbored a secret crush, kills a black man that he mistook for an intruder, racial tensions erupt, and Nella has to make some kind of sense of the situation. The several stories of the people in Nella’s life form richly interconnected layers that reflect on life and death, disappointment and forgiveness, sadness and hope (for instance, Angela’s father’s experiences in the Gulf War haunt the book) and help Nella to work toward empathy. The narrative alternates between Nella’s past and present, with interstitial observations in the voice of a statue keeping watch over the girls who seek privacy in the graveyard where he stands. Spot illustrations capture the soft sweetness of everyday life in Nella’s neighborhood; this is a warm, resonant reminder that forgiveness, care, and resolute kindness are at least part of the answer to the problem of life’s fragility.