FASD Advocacy Meets Murder Mystery in The Whitest Wall

I love novels that integrate the lives of people with special needs into their plots. They allow me to take a rare detour into fiction reading without feeling like I'm neglecting my duty to study-up on children's disabilities. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Inside Out Girl are a couple I remember fondly, and it looks like I now have a series of novels on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder to look forward to.

The first book in what will be a Bootleg Brothers Trilogy is The Whitest Wall (compare prices), which starts out like a mystery novel with the murder of Doc, a beloved small-town chiropractor, and develops into a look at all the ways alcohol can mess up lives through generations.

The murder suspect, Kevin, is a friendly, spirited, jumpy young man who confesses to the deed without having any idea he's doing so. Kevin reminds his boss, Sam, of Sam's son Shaun, who died driving recklessly in an accident that injured Doc's son, Mike; this traumatic brain injury will, I suspect, prove significant as the murder investigation continues. Kevin was staying at the home of Margie, a single mother with a history of making bad decisions. In Kevin, Shaun, and Margie, author Jodee Kulp offers three faces of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder -- though that diagnosis as mysterious and unrecognized in this first book of the trilogy as the true identity of the murderer.

The Whitest Wall is more about set-up than resolution, and I was a little disappointed to get to the end with so many interesting plot threads still unraveled. Some of those may get knit up by the second book, Tiger Butterfly, due out this month; the final volume, Different Beats, will follow the same time next year. If you're looking for a thought-provoking novel that also gets you special-needs Brownie points for learning more about Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, look these Bootleg Brothers up.

Also new today: Site of the Day | Today's News and Views | Tip of the Day

_{Cover images courtesy of Better Endings, New Beginnings}