LALO LESPERANCE NEVER FORGOT

Adan Rocha narrates a story of self-discovery set in Florida during the COVID-19 lockdown. Eleven-year-old Lalo is confined to his apartment; he attends video school with a neighboring classmate while his widowed mother works long hours as a nursing assistant. On top of the pervasive fear and boredom of lockdown, Lalo struggles to remember both recent events and his father, who died when he was 5. Maybe he can make a time machine to help? Rocha's emotionally muted narration befits the worry that pervaded the pandemic. He switches smoothly from Lalo's English to the accents of those around him: his neighbors, his Mexican-American mother, his barely recalled Haitian father. Rocha's evocation of Lalo's older brother's sneering bravado is particularly affecting. V.S. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine [Published: NOVEMBER 2023]