A Gate at the Stairs--#69 finished

An interesting story of a college aged girl that goes through some very tough and unusual times. She gets a job as a nanny for a couple trying to adopt a child and has to go on the interviews helping them with the adoption. They adopt a little girl of mixed race which is kind of scandalous in small town Iowa. She starts dating a college classmate boy that she thought was Brazilian but was instead Arab of some sort and he leaves college as seemingly a terrorist. The couple with the adopted child go through many happenings, etc but in the end a bizarre past catches up with them & they lose the child back to the adoption agency. The college girl was holding a poison/homemade cleaner for the lady and girl's roommate eats some and nearly dies and has stomach pumped. Returns home to find out younger brother joined army and left day after she gets back. She helps dad on the farm and her mom slips more and more out of reality. Brother goes straight from basic training to Afghanistan and is killed days after getting there.

There is more but those are the highlights. An interesting story but other than the college girl, I don't see much of a connection or an answer to what is the point the author was trying to get at. A lot of random weird and tragic stuff happened, but it just seems like a story, reality just skitters along outside of it. Oh well, I wanted to like it and parts I did, just altogether doesn't make much sense to me.

I will be posting it on PBS, there are still 35 to 40 WL for it I think so it will move once I post it. I have shipped a bunch of books off recently so I might wait a week before posting this one or until something else gets requested. I am reading the John Stossel book about Myths and Truths--don't have exact title in front of me. I am also reading The Nubian Prince about a recruiter in Europe for the sex trade. Also just started Robert Lipsyte One Fat Summer. Probably won't add another for a couple days yet so I can make a little more progress in these three already started.