First Amazon VINE review posted Nov 2 0
“5.0 out of 5 stars Salinger and Honenberger: A dynamic duo!, November 2, 2010 By Judith Paley (Denver, CO) – (VINE VOICE)
This review is from: Catcher, Caught (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program
Daniel Solstice Landon embraces all that may be left of his abbreviated life with admirable enthusiasm and more energy than one might expect of a young man with untreated acute myelogenous leukemia. While I found his ability to carry on with teenage escapades and rites of passage despite the advancing AML a bit unbelievable, this disconnect did not diminish my enjoyment in this wonderful read one bit. What distinguishes a great fiction writer, after all, but the ability to convey the human condition in a way that is true if not real?
One can’t help but remember newspaper articles on parents who refuse conventional treatments for their children with life-threatening illnesses. More questions than answers in these tragic snippets, parental rights, children’s rights, medical ethics, quality vs. quantity of remaining months or years. Ms. Honenberger does an incredible job of fleshing out those factual outlines in this heart-rending story of a wise-cracking, precocious adolescent and his holdover hippie parents. This fifty-something mother/author proves herself completely capable of remembering first love, the perilous temptations of sex and drugs, and the mother and child reunion despite disappointments, anger, and misunderstandings.
Gut-wrenching, funny, tear-jerking, this well-crafted novel certainly works on the adult side of the aisle, and I have no doubt that young adults will want to have at it as well. Those of us who read “The Catcher in the Rye” decades ago will dig it out for another pass, and younger readers who’ve not yet had the pleasure will want to get their own copy.”