BROKEN GLASS PARK

My latest find...

BROKEN GLASS PARK
by Alina Bronsky

Sascha Naimann is a 17-year-old Russian girl living in Germany. Vadim, her brutal stepfather, kills Sascha’s mother and is sent to prison. While she and her younger siblings are being smothered by distant relatives and social workers, all Sascha can think about is exacting vengeance on Vadim.

When a story runs in the local paper about Vadim’s lauded in-prison reformation, Sascha goes ape-shit — storming to the newspaper office to confront the writer. There, she meets Volker Trebur, an editor who had known her mother and offers to make things right. Sascha holds him to it, and winds up moving in to Volker’s guestroom where she becomes uneasily involved with the Trebur family.

At the story’s conclusion, Sascha ends up in “broken glass park” — the most seedy and dangerous area in her neighborhood — where the varied, complicated layers of her struggle are laid bare.

THE SKINNY: A WONDERFUL, MOVING READ...WITH A “WOW” ENDING.