Review: Publishers Weekly
A half-Japanese girl navigates the perils of small-town Wisconsin in Nina Revoyr’s splendid Wingshooters
Wingshooters
Small towns are perhaps not famous for readily accepting outsiders, a lesson Michelle LeBeau, the protagonist of Revoyr’s keen new novel, learns firsthand. Ten-year-old Michelle is the child of a Japanese mother who abandoned her husband and daughter and a father who was too busy chasing dreams to raise his daughter. Upon her arrival in 1973 Deerhorn, Wis., where she is to live with her grandparents, she becomes the first nonwhite in town, and thus a convenient target for taunting and bullying. Luckily, she has as adoring grandfather, Charlie LeBeau, and grandmother to sustain her and provide a firm family foundation. But when a young black couple, the Garretts, move to town— she a nurse, he a teacher—the town’s sizable population of bigots make it clear the Garretts aren’t welcome, the resentment peaking with a cascade of tragedies that have a big impact on Michelle’s life. “The hardest thing about suffering a terrible loss is that you usually survive it,” Michelle says, and Revoyr does a remarkable job of conveying Michelle’s lost innocence and fear throughout this accomplished story of family and the dangers of complacency in the face of questionable justice.
