"Dear Fang, With Love" Review

Read the article on the eMissourian here

In “Dear Fang, With Love,” Vera, a smart and outgoing 17-year-old, scares her small community in California when she experiences a mental breakdown at a party. Her mother, Katya, and her doctors are baffled, but no one seems as surprised as her estranged father, Lucas.

Lucas and Katya had met as teenagers, thrown together during their new and scary lives as students at a boarding school.

Kat seemed so exotic and dangerous to him, her Russian background and abrasive nature scaring him more than it probably should have. After years of living by strict rules, Kat and Lucas left school and joined a commune, purposefully getting pregnant. Lucas, gripped with fear at this new and loose-cannon lifestyle, called his mother to take them home.

The two go their separate ways, Katya giving birth to Vera while Lucas left the state for school.

Lucas can’t even get near his daughter until she’s a preteen, and since then he’s only been able to see her on the weekends. This is why he’s so taken aback at her mental breakdown; he thought she was perfect and wanted to keep it that way.

Facing this new reality, Lucas decides to try and take part in his daughter’s rehabilitation. He feels that the best way to show his daughter who she truly is to take her to where their story started.

Though Vera was born in America, she was raised by her Russian mother. Lucas wants to show her Vilnius, the home where his grandmother lived before she was forced out and into a concentration camp during World War II.

Thirty-five-year-old Lucas and his daughter struggle through their differences in a strange land and battle through the cracks that have spanned the years between them.

This novel is beautifully descriptive with a fairytale-like feel that will keep readers wrapped up in the author’s words until the story ends. Though explicit at times, “Dear Fang, With Love” breaks the harsh realities of death and the blatant uncertainties of life with dark humor and elegant prose.

Please readers, don’t pick up this book until you’re ready to think, to cry, and to indulge on the insanity which lives within us all.

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