Several years ago I was on a sightseeing bus in Paris, the kind one can hop on and off, day pass in hand, to explore neighbourhoods. I turned my head at just the right moment to see three agile young people leaping along stairs and walls beside a tall apartment building before the bus whisked us -and them- out of sight. I couldn't quite believe what I'd seen. Had I imagined it? Now, after reading this action-packed and well-plotted novel, I remembered those faraway figures and I finally know that who I was seeing were traceurs, and possibly one traceuse, practicing parkour, an intensely athletic cross between gymnastics and running and jujitsu while navigating obstacles which first originated in France. It is now a popular sport in many other countries.
Publisher Pam Withers is well-known for her ability to write about sports of all kinds and her own background as an athlete has led to books, like this one, where the reader is transported into the (much more accomplished and fearless) bodies of the athletes within. In this interesting collaboration with Canadian Muslim youth leader and co-author Arooj Hayat, the setting is a fictional Richland, Washington, USA where a student from Yemen, the only member of his immediate family to survive a disastrously overloaded boat making an ocean crossing in the Mediterranean, shows up at the local high school.
An unhappy young white American student is back home again as well because her mother would not stay in Egypt, much less move to Yemen along with her war correspondent husband. Bronte, the daughter, is furious with her mother for taking her away from Egypt where she was learning parkour and Arabic and especially because she had a secret Egyptian boyfriend. Bronte also misses her Dad and competes with her mother for his attention and affection. She is not a perfect or especially nice young woman but she is an honestly portrayed teenager. She has temper tantrums and there is no evidence of her being helpful with chores at home, in short, Bronte is a privileged, pretty blonde, but also intelligent and fed-up with being seen as "the cheerleader type", as if there is a type, just one of the lazy-minded generalizations this book tackles very adeptly. The predatory world of Isis recruiters seems to have reached the pleasant boulevards of middle-class America though and rebellious ex-cheerleaders and present-day parkour athletes are targets. Possibly. This novel has more twists and turns than a parkour troupe heading down the bridges and embankments along the Seine. Parkour is, I realized belatedly, the perfect metaphor for teenagers navigating one of life's two most stressful stages, filled with obstacles (the other is being very elderly, in failing health, and being powerless, which on the surface is the exact opposite of being a teen except for feeling powerless of course).
This novel offers readers authentic insights about the refugee experience and religious intolerance and understanding. It also reminds older readers like myself how awful teenage girls can be to their rigid and overly-anxious mothers! The author 'tested' the novel in a high school class with students from diverse backgrounds. More than a few had harrowing experiences en route to North America as well, so reading this book was a validating experience for them. There is a reader's guide and a wonderful list of resources so people can see parkour athletes in action and learn the facts about Muslim beliefs and practices, like wearing a hijab, among other things. This is an energetic, thoughtful and deeply satisfying read at so many levels and I learned a great deal about many things along the way. Kudos to the authors and I hope, in these troubled times around the world, that this novel finds its way into many languages and into the receptive hands of many readers.
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