Army brats lived a unusual existence in the 1980s, the time supposedly "between the wars" of Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan--but actually an era with a war all its own, the Cold War. Before the current reality of repeated deployments and existential dread of same, the main challenge of soldiers' children during that time was to dutifully follow their uniformed parents to base after base and attempt to mature amidst such rootlessness. Constance Squires was just such a "brat" and has crafted a debut novel that deftly uses fiction to tell an engaging tale of transient youth that no doubt is very close to her own.
We meet Lucinda Collins in 1983, a 13-year-old girl just landed at a base in West Germany. She makes friends in a calculating way born of oft-moving necessity. A cute boy's dad set to transfer in two months? She cuts him loose to save later pain. At the same time, Lucinda is watching her parents' marriage crack. When a young private on the base shares his record collection with her, Lucinda develops a passion for music that will sustain her through the moves, the family drama and the early adulthood hardships born of her upbringing's particulars. References to music groups and artists like Echo and the Bunnymen, Nina Hagen and the Minutemen, along with vivid descriptions of the West German club scene, give the novel an authentic '80s feel.
Squires is no prose artisan, relying instead on pages-long dialogue of wise-ass banter between characters. But her tough heroine is likable and the epiphanies that bring Lucinda into adulthood, if not exactly profound, are satisfyingly real. --Cherie Ann Parker, freelance journalist and book critic