The Bastard Year

"It was exactly one year ago today," my father said, "that the hostages were taken." He looked at me as if he wanted me to say something. I figured he was probably wrong about it being a year to the day, but I wasn't about to tell him that. "A year is a long time," he said. "A lot can happen in a year." In the company of classic coming-of-age works, Richard Zuras's debut novel tells the story of a boy's final year of childhood and a family's near disintegration. When Zain's father is fired from the CIA in March of 1980, it creates a tremor that threatens to upend the family's precarious balance. Zain's awakening to a world riddled with cracks and his adolescent attempts to mend them are the stuff from which young men, and great stories, are made.