They Come in All Colors

In this emotionally acute debut novel, effectively delivered from a child's perspective, smart-mouthed, biracial Huey Fairchild is the only nonwhite student at New York's elite Claremont Prep in the 1970s. Growing up in civil rights-era Georgia, Huey hadn't see himself as biracial—he identified with his white father as the boss of black worker Nestor yet didn't seem to register his black mother's race, puzzling over why she couldn't swim at the local motel pool, as he could. Huey's family was shattered by traumatizing incidents that began with the closing of the pool (a black boy was rumored to have swum there), and he and his mother headed north, where he got a scholarship to Claremont even as his mother swallowed her disappointment with a housekeeper's job. Not surprisingly, Huey is an outsider at Claremont, learning uncomfortable truths about how we're seen and defined by others. His one friend is dorky Ariel J. Zukowski, whose betrayal leads to violence that puts Huey on the line in more ways than one. Throughout, Hansen deftly unpacks the era's tensions and the complexities of identity in ways that startle; biracial himself, he offers an understanding of Huey's situation that is distinctive and surprising.