2020 Contenders: The Long Ride, by Marina Budhos

Jamila Clarke, Josie Rivera, and Francesca George live in Queens, New York, in 1971. Though their neighborhood is majority white, all three girls are mixed-race. This year, the three friends will be entering middle school, but even more changes are in the air. A school busing initiative has been enacted, and Jamila and Josie will be making the long trek to attend a school in a majority-black neighborhood; Francesca's parents are choosing instead to send her to a private school. Against this backdrop, our heroines will struggle with family drama, navigating relationships with boys, school politics, and more.

Probably too much more, to tell the truth. As I was reading The Long Ride, I felt that it was trying to stuff too many themes and plot points into a book that's right around 200 pages. Some of the subplots are so briefly developed that they might as well not be there (it's hard to remember that Jamila's service as campaign manager for an acquaintance's bid for class president even happened), while others seem rushed or less than fully explored. This also affects the pacing, which I thought had a certain stop-start nature that worked against the story.

The book that The Long Ride reminded me of most was Glory Be, Augusta Scattergood's 2012 novel. Both volumes are exceptional in the way that they conjure up a specific place and time, and help the reader feel what it was like to be a child there and then. Both attempt to meld a story about family relationships and friend dynamics with larger issues of civil rights, racism, and justice. And, to be honest, neither book is really able to achieve this goal; they both end up having bitten off more than they're able to chew.

Marina Budhos's previous work has been for adult and young adult readers, and she's received starred reviews, nominations, and awards for many of those books. If The Long Ride doesn't quite hold together, it may be that Budhos is still becoming comfortable with writing books for a younger age group. I don't think The Long Ride will seriously contend for the Newbery, but it does make me curious about the next story that Budhos will choose to tell.