A parent’s men­tal ill­ness is not often addressed in children’s books. Wait­ing for Eugene address­es it direct­ly by show­ing its symp­toms, its caus­es, and its effects on a fam­i­ly. Twelve-year – old Sara Gold­man loves her father’s sto­ries and derives artis­tic inspi­ra­tion from them, draw­ing the peo­ple that he describes as hav­ing lived with him and sus­tained him dur­ing the war years. The killing of his fam­i­ly and his hor­ren­dous expe­ri­ences as a small child hid­den in dark­ness under a barn floor have nev­er been emo­tion­al­ly resolved, and Papa’s retreats into the past through psy­chot­ic episodes become more fre­quent with the sto­ries he tells. The rela­tion­ship between art and expe­ri­ence is nev­er com­plete­ly estab­lished, but through the con­vic­tion of the nar­ra­tive and the appeal of the char­ac­ters, its influ­ence is felt. The sto­ry is set in the 1960’s, and the war that so dam­aged Papa is not named, although it is clear to read­ers with a his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive that it is the Holo­caust. The author’s deci­sion not to sit­u­ate the sto­ry in spe­cif­ic terms is meant to uni­ver­sal­ize the suf­fer­ing of war, whether it is the Holo­caust, eth­nic cleans­ing in Koso­vo, or geno­cide in Rwan­da. In a work where his­tor­i­cal set­ting is impor­tant, this would be a detri­ment, but in this sto­ry, which deals oblique­ly with sev­er­al inter-relat­ed but non-his­toric themes, it may puz­zle chil­dren but not deter them from under­stand­ing the story’s emo­tion­al con­tent. For ages 11 – 14.