Black Dove White Raven by Elizabeth Wein

This tear-jerker will leave readers wanting to follow the next chapter in Darius’ life.Īfter surviving a suicide attempt, a fragile teen isn't sure she can endure without cutting herself. Khorram’s debut novel is filled with insight into the lives of teens, weaving together the reality of living with mental illness while also dealing with identity and immigration politics. For the first time in a long time, Darius learns to love himself no matter what external forces attempt to squash his confidence.

Sohrab teaches Darius what friendship is really about: loyalty, honesty, and someone who has your back in a football (soccer) match. But all that changes when Darius meets Sohrab, a Bahá’í boy, in Yazd. When he arrives in Iran, learning to play the Persian card game Rook, socializing, and celebrating Nowruz with a family he had never properly met before is all overwhelming and leaves Darius wondering if he’ll ever truly belong anywhere. He’s mocked for his name and nerdy interests at Chapel Hill High School in Portland, Oregon, and doesn’t speak enough Farsi to communicate with his Iranian relatives either. Iranian on his mother’s side and white American on his father’s side, Darius never quite fits in.

When Darius’ grandfather becomes terminally ill, Darius, along with his parents and younger sister, travels to Iran for the first time in his life.

This device does not create as seamless a narrative as in her previous two books, and Emmy’s and Teo’s voices are often hard to tell apart, but Wein’s forceful prose will carry readers past any sense of contrivance.ĭarius Kellner suffers from depression, bullying by high school jocks, and a father who seems to always be disappointed in him. The story is pieced together from a combination of documents Emmy’s opening begging Haile Selassie for help is followed by a collection of the two teens’ writings, including childhood stories, themes written for the cooperative school and long, diarylike flight logs. Wein does again what she did so beautifully in Code Name Verity (2012) and Rose Under Fire (2013): She plaits together the historical record, her passion for flying and ferociously vivid characters to create a heartbreaking adventure that grounds readers in the moment even as geopolitical complexity threatens to knock them off their feet. Alone, Momma raises them on a remote coffee cooperative, an idyll cut short as tensions rise between the independent African nation and Italy, whose colonies border it. Their aviator mothers had performed together as barnstormers Black Dove and White Raven until a bird strike killed Teo’s mother as the two women were preparing to immigrate to Ethiopia, where Teo’s father had come from. Wein returns to Ethiopia, the setting of her Arthurian adventures, for a high-flying novel about the 1935 Italian invasion.Įmilia Menotti and Teodros Dupré share no DNA, but they are otherwise as close as siblings could be.

Black Dove White Raven by Elizabeth Wein