February 5, 2024
Freudenberger (Lost and Wanted) offers a layered story of race and privilege set against the backdrop of Covid-19 lockdowns. Pia, 15, has been raised since her parents’ divorce five years ago on the island of Mo’orea in French Polynesia by her marine biologist mother, Nathalie. Now, in fall 2020, Pia’s sent to live with her father, Stephen, a cardiologist in New York City, where, with Covid case numbers decreasing and the lockdown lifting, Nathalie hopes she will get some much needed “socialization of her peers.” Stephen lives with his younger, pregnant wife, high school teacher Kate, whose relationship with Pia starts off strained. Meanwhile, one of Kate’s students, Athyna, who is Black, takes care of her toddler nephew full-time while trying to complete her senior year remotely in Staten Island. The eventual friendship between Pia and Athyna provides an opportunity for Freudenberger to explore the girls’ varying experience of the pandemic due to racial and class differences, as when Athyna joins the family in the Hamptons and Pia urges her to say she’s Pia’s friend to anyone who asks where she lives. Freudenberger’s longtime fans will find all the probing social insights and well-drawn characters they’ve come to expect from this accomplished author.
September 13, 2024
Freudenberger's (Lost and Wanted) latest follows independent-minded 15-year-old Pia, who has grown up on a volcanic island off the coast of Tahiti, where her mother works to save endangered coral reefs. Her father, a cardiologist living in New York City, has remarried, and he and his new wife, Kate, a high school teacher, are expecting their first child. Pia is sent to live with her father so she can attend school in person during the pandemic. Pia's father is caught up in the medical chaos of the pandemic, leaving Kate to parent privileged and rebellious Pia. Meanwhile, Athyna, one of Kate's students, struggles with conflict at home. An additional storyline traces Pia's relationship with Raffi, a Tahitian man who has vowed to avenge the damage done to his homeland during decades of nuclear testing. Freudenberger crafts a web of interwoven stories that lay bare the conflicts between work and family, wealth and poverty, and colonialism and independence. Listeners may feel unmoored by the untranslated French phrases in the novel. Even so, Rebecca Lowman narrates skillfully, providing French and other accents as appropriate. VERDICT This coming-of-age story, simmering with tension and insight, should have broad appeal.--Joanna M. Burkhardt
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