New Beginnings — Pamela Laskin

“Laskin offers a beautiful kaleidoscope of nine unique perspectives from around the city struggling to make it through high school, and as the pressures and relationships shift and morph, New Beginnings becomes an intricate and authentic mosaic of New York's teenage world.” -- Brendan Kiely, author of The Gospel of Winter “With her usual searing honesty, candor, and gift for creating unique characters, Pamela Laskin has once again created a riveting, unexpected story that will touch young people. These are experiences they will absolutely identify with and characters they will never forget. -- Suzanne Weyn, author of The Bar Code Tattoo NEW BEGINNINGS is a young adult reader. It spans ages eleven through fourteen, and follows the lives of nine characters through four years of high school. Though the central conflict appears to be college, it's not really that at all, but rather about growing up and evolving. In other words, this is a book about identity formation, with all the issues adolescents must battle -- parents; the expectations of school; their fragile egos; the ‘secrets' they harbor; their fears and what society tells them they must do and become, when perhaps they are not ready. In the process, they discover their sexual identities as well, and while doing so may question the roles society has assigned to them, and may be prejudiced as well -- perhaps out of their own fears. (Note: the ‘alleged' homophobia is all about sexual identity formation). The horrors of this time are addressed in this book -- anorexia; drugs; alcohol; parental abuse; failed relationships, but what is most important is that the trust develops amongst the teens, and they form core identities which help them to begin, anew.