Evie Lefkowitz is fac­ing more than the typ­i­cal prob­lems of ado­les­cence. As her bat mitz­vah cer­e­mo­ny approach­es, Evie’s acute grief at the loss of her father over­shad­ows excite­ment or antic­i­pa­tion. He was the can­tor at her syn­a­gogue, Shir Shalom. Although Can­tor Min­di, his replace­ment, is sen­si­tive to Evie’s com­plex response to this rite of pas­sage, no easy solu­tion can alle­vi­ate the tragedy. To make mat­ters worse, Evie’s moth­er has ten­ta­tive­ly begun to date Mr. Mitchell, the assis­tant prin­ci­pal of Evie’s mid­dle school. 

Diana Har­mon Asher’s nov­el avoids sim­ple life lessons and embraces ambi­gu­i­ty. The cast of char­ac­ters in Trou­ble Finds Evie Lefkowitz includes sev­er­al of the types pop­u­lat­ing mid­dle-grade nov­els. Evie is intel­li­gent and sen­si­tive. Her best friend, Rachel Mizu­sawa, is an ide­al com­pan­ion and source of sup­port. Evie’s moth­er strug­gles with her own issues, but even her awk­ward attempts at mov­ing for­ward are sin­cere. Two social­ly less well-adjust­ed boys, Tom­my Hal­l­i­day and Joey Cer­a­co, are the prover­bial bad influ­ences held up as neg­a­tive exam­ples by par­ents and teach­ers. Yet Asher’s nar­ra­tive sophis­ti­ca­tion thwarts stereo­type. No one has defin­i­tive moments of self-knowl­edge. Every­one is con­fused. Even Mr. Mitchell admits to his stu­dents that his love of Chaucer’s Can­ter­bury Tales drew him to his posi­tion at Can­ter­bury Mid­dle School.

There are no lav­ish cel­e­bra­tions in the book. Ash­er has Evie explain the dif­fer­ence between the mis­con­cep­tion that one has, as opposed to becom­ing, a bar or bat mitz­vah, ​“like some weird shape-shift­ing crea­ture.” Evie’s accu­rate expres­sion is a hybrid of fear and awe, an appro­pri­ate response to a turn­ing point in a young person’s Jew­ish life. Hebrew school is both a haven and a provo­ca­tion for her, espe­cial­ly since sad­ness has actu­al­ly dri­ven Evie and her moth­er from week­ly ser­vices: ​“We still go to tem­ple on hol­i­days, but most Fri­day nights we stay in, just my mom and me. It feels too sad to be at tem­ple with­out him there.” Ash­er allows the irony of Evie’s state­ment to have its own impact, with­out sug­gest­ing any contradiction.

Life at Can­ter­bury Mid­dle School takes a provoca­tive turn. Evie and Rachel’s friend, Spencer, involves them in his plan to res­cue pray­ing man­tis­es from an enthu­si­as­tic sci­ence teacher’s exper­i­ment. Their plot ulti­mate­ly involves Joey and Tom­my, whose rep­u­ta­tions fol­low them every­where, from the school read­ing spe­cial­ist to local law enforce­ment. They are vic­tims of mis­un­der­stand­ing but also bul­lies, if only to a rather uncom­mit­ted degree. When Rachel and Evie con­front them with their igno­rance about each girl’s respec­tive eth­nic her­itage, the scene is empow­er­ing and believ­able. ​“A say­onara is not some­thing you wear,” Rachel admon­ish­es them, and a hora is not Evie’s default dance for every occasion.

The sur­pris­es that arise in Evie’s sto­ry are not unex­pect­ed plot points. They are moments of con­fu­sion and affir­ma­tion, steps towards life changes that nev­er rel­e­gate the past to irrel­e­vance. Young as well as adult read­ers will relate to the char­ac­ters’ unmis­tak­able authen­tic­i­ty in a nov­el which is both acces­si­ble and­so­phis­ti­cat­ed, per­fect for shar­ing across gen­er­a­tions. Trou­ble Finds Evie Lefkowitz is high­ly recommended.