Tell Us Something True/Dana Reinhardt (you're. going. to. love. it.)

We returned from a rain-soaked Shenandoah Valley to a nor'easter being chased by a possible Category 4. But I had places to be. Third and Spruce, for a conversation. Up near the Art Museum, to visit with a friend.

I had places to be, and I was saturated. I was a walking puddle, a character from a Peanuts cartoon.

I had two things in my bag, in my long walk from damp to embarrassing. One of them was Dana Reinhardt's oh-so-perfect forthcoming novel (I apologize in advance that you will have to wait for it until next spring), Tell Us Something True (Wendy Lamb Books, Random House Children's Books).

May I preface this by saying that I have enormous respect for Dana Reinhardt—as a writer, as a person. Despite her impressive breadth as an author, her astonishing talent with character, story, and sentences, and her cache of awards, you will not find her out there on the circuit showboating. You will not hear her raising toasts to herself.

So 1)  I'm predisposed to love Dana Reinhardt, and 2) I felt hugely blessed to receive an early copy of her book. But 3) Even I could not imagine how utterly un-put-downable this new novel is. About a teenage boy who is dumped by a girl and finds himself (on his long walk home) standing before a fading sign—black words on white: A SECOND CHANCE.

This dumped kid, River: He feels he needs a second chance.

And so he enters into this community of teens who are struggling to break free of one kind of addiction or another. He feels at peace. It's his turn to talk and he fables up something. He confesses that he is addicted to weed. It's not true. It's not even close to true. But if River holds onto (then embellishes) this ready myth, he'll always have a chair in this circle.

He wants a chair in that circle.

This is the premise of Dana's book. But Dana never barters with mere premise. She is a storyteller with a heart, a writer (and a mom) who understands that characters make for story, not theses. That the honorable thing to do with a novelistic set-up is to find out who lives inside the chosen frame. Who really lives there. What they think. How they hope. How they screw up. How they take first steps toward forgiveness. How they continually readjust the way they see the world and themselves.

There's not a single throw-away character in Tell Us Something True. No cardboard constructions representing An Idea. There are best friends, an adorable half sister, good parents, white neighborhoods, Mexican ones, missed buses, the romance of imagination. There's humor and infinite humanity. There's line after line of prose so good I kept pumping my fist, and let me tell you something: I didn't want this book to end.

I despair, sometimes, at the YA category. At trends that suffocate original impulses. At books that sell on the basis of a hook and authorial ambition (and little else). At copy cat voices. At plot-point checklists. At self-serving declarations. At marketing machines.

But then along comes Dana Reinhardt, who writes character and considered plots, who quietly, then boldly escalates her ideas, who gets you all caught up inside the family of action, who leaves you running from place to place in a storm, desperate to return to her story.

Tell Us Something True is hope; it is humanity; it offers a master class in ultimately accepting our own impossible imperfections. Original, funny, wrenching, real, and intelligently surprising, it's bound to endure. It might even heal the many cracks between us.

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Two Boys Kissing/David Levithan: Reflections

Beneath the shade of a tree I sat suspended between two deck chairs and a David Levithan story.

I sat spellbound.

I had begun the book, Two Boys Kissing (Random House, August 2013), a few days ago on a train and had nearly missed my stop. I had picked it up again today, after the errands were done. I'd wanted a clean house and a full refrigerator, no chance for any niggling interruptions, for there are books, and there are books. Two Boys Kissing is a book.

About a marathon kiss between two best friends in a public place, in a still-jarring world. About the lives beyond the kiss—a long-time couple and a brand-new couple and a boy who doesn't believe he'll ever fit in. About the parents and friends and teachers and bullies and sisters and aunts who make the world scary and safe. About those who died from disease and despair and still have stories to tell; they miss the sun, they miss the chance at love, they miss how much it must hurt to kiss for thirty-two unbroken hours. They narrate, exhilarate, caution, scream—these men who have gone on, these men who watch boys who don't know everything yet about right now, or the future. They prowl into beating hearts and silk-bind separate narratives and most of the time they cannot be heard, but sometimes, it seems, they can.

David Levithan writes big stories. He has countless definitions, and proof, of love. He gives no credence to the idea of the impossible. Two Boys Kissing commands the page and shifts perspectives. It validates first love, endangered love, once love, future love.

It says someone out there cares.

It says live:

Waking is hard, and waking is glorious. We watch as you stir, then as you stumble out of your beds. We know that gratitude is the last thing on your mind. But you should be grateful.

You've made it to another day.

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