Book Review: We Never Asked for Wings by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
We Never Asked for Wings: A Novel by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
Publisher: Ballentine Books
Release Date: August 18, 2015
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
For fourteen years, Letty Espinosa has worked three jobs around San Francisco to make ends meet while her mother raised her children—Alex, now fifteen, and Luna, six—in their tiny apartment on a forgotten spit of wetlands near the bay. But now Letty’s parents are returning to Mexico, and Letty must step up and become a mother for the first time in her life.
Navigating this new terrain is challenging for Letty, especially as Luna desperately misses her grandparents and Alex, who is falling in love with a classmate, is unwilling to give his mother a chance. Letty comes up with a plan to help the family escape the dangerous neighborhood and heartbreaking injustice that have marked their lives, but one wrong move could jeopardize everything she’s worked for and her family’s fragile hopes for the future.
I loved Vanessa Diffenbaugh’s first novel, The Language of Flowers. I went into We Never Asked for Wings hoping I would like it as much as I know the “sophomore slump” is common with new authors. Thankfully, it turned out I didn’t have anything to worry about.
The bulk of the story is about Letty and her relationship with her children. When her mother moves back to Mexico, Letty is becoming a real mother to her kids for the first time. She struggles and she makes bad choices. The author does an excellent job of filling in her back story such that I felt like I understood her and rooted for her to overcome her shortcomings as a mother.
I was really impressed with the author’s attention to detail. A lot of research was required for this novel on several seemingly unrelated subjects. Alex’s grandfather makes art with feathers and there is much information about feathers and birds. In addition, Alex is a star student obsessed with science so there is a lot of scientific information in this book that went completely over my head. That was okay though, it wasn’t necessary to understand Alex’s science project to understand his character. Finally, the complex immigration laws played a part in this book.
The best thing about We Never Asked for Wings is that it humanizes the plight of undocumented immigrants in this country. Of course the characters are fictional but they still serve as realistic examples of what is happening in real life. It’s important to know that there are all kinds of reasons that people are in this country without documentation and they shouldn’t all be judged as a group.
With this second outing, Diffenbaugh has proven that she can consistently write books with well-developed characters and compelling plots. I’m looking forward to reading whatever she comes up with next.
(I received a complementary copy of this book for review.)
