Imperfect Spiral by Debbie Levy (review)

A panic attack at her bat mitzvah shakes Danielle's confidence to the core, so she foregoes the opportunity to be a camp counselor and chooses the seemingly safer option of babysitting a five-year-old boy named Humphrey for her summer job. She and Humphrey develop a deeply caring friendship that sustains them both until one day, when walking home from the park, Humphrey darts into the road to retrieve a ball and is struck and killed by a car. The narrative starts with the incident and charts its aftermath, alternating between present circumstances and Danielle's memories of the time she spent with Humphrey. The present circumstances include the community's reaction of calling for streetlights and sidewalks along the road and suggesting that teens need babysitting classes, but more insistently, the accident has incited resentment of people in the country illegally, since the driver of the car that hit Humphrey was a man who had long overstayed his student visa from fifteen years earlier. The book thus has all the complications of real life: while Danielle is entirely focused on grieving Humphrey, her friends and neighbors are pushing to involve her in their various causes; additionally, she is being drawn into a relationship with a boy who turns out to have more at stake in the incident than she knew. The chapters that focus on Humphrey are an homage to the capacity of young children to think deeply interesting thoughts, while the sections that focus on the present day develop Danielle as a young woman whose family dynamics could either hold her back or propel her forward, depending on her choices. The immigration angle is depicted as a genuine debate rather than simplistic sidetaking, and there are threads throughout that explore the painful, messy, but sometimes quite wonderful nature of relationships. Readers will laugh and cry, but perhaps most importantly, they will think their way through important personal and social issues as they grieve along with Danielle.