No Parking at the End of Times

Gr 8 Up—This haunting and elegiac tale opens with Abigail and her family living in a van parked on the San Francisco streets. Months earlier, Abby's unemployed father took the family from their North Carolina home to follow "Brother John" across the country to a place where they would all meet the end of days together. The world was due to end at midnight on New Year's Eve. Now it's January, the world did not end, and Abby, her twin brother Aaron, and her parents still have no home. With no school to attend, Abby and Aaron's only escape from the close confines of the van is the predatory self-anointed preacher's "church" (an empty store). The family is often hungry, cold, and dirty—yet do not consider themselves "homeless." Aaron has hooked up with a group of homeless teens who hang out in the park and has begun a secret relationship with Jess, a street-smart girl who left home at 14 when her mother's boyfriend sexually abused her. Abby wants to continue to be the good girl her parents expect and to protect her brother from getting mixed up in dangerous street drama, but most of all, she wants to go home. The protagonist's desperation is palpable. Readers will wait anxiously for something terrible to happen, only to come to the dawning realization that it already has. Bliss offers a stark portrayal of a family lost and a searing perspective on homelessness. An interesting choice for book discussion and recommended for readers of realistic fiction.—Tara Kehoe, New Jersey State Library Talking Book and Braille Center, Trenton