Customer Reviews

The Borrowed Wind

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This book focuses on the first person account of Dave Evers, a biracial man within a Caucasian family, going through what a lot of people go through, family problems. But the main conflict in the book is between him and Jake, his more successful anatomy professor Caucasian half brother who in the book describes a family as, "...a disposable unit you are biologically tied to." These two have me thinking of how wrong women are when they say, "All men are the same." Dave is reasonably sensitive but compared to his brother, Jake, is considered effeminate by their sister, Sarah.

He is confronted with two sets of mysteries. He sets out to find the black father who wanted nothing to do with him and at the end of it, found a mother's betrayal. The second more important mystery is finding out if his brother committed the murder of Barbara Landry, which he was originally suspect, so his brother wouldn't go to jail for a murder he did not commit. But if he did commit the murder, Dave was determined to stop him from becoming an inmate on death row. I especially like chapter sixteen of this book which had Leslie, Dave's girlfriend and Barbara's ex husband, a gay guy determined to stay in the closet jailed by a Christian conservative Sheriff whose mouth was as lethal as his gun.

One of my favorite statements in the book as Dave struggled with the possibility his brother actually committed the crime was, "I always felt I had struck a tragedy in my past. One I wasn't sure how I encountered but was sure had robbed me of innocence and due providence in life. I never knew the real tragedy would have little to do with me. Something about having a murderer for a brother made my blood boil." My most favorite is about the conflict between these two brothers, the conflict of what being a man should or should not be. He says, "Desensitize, I remember telling myself when I was younger, so that my feet can fit into the shoes of a man. I was conflicted, thrown into manhood, not necessarily by a natural urge." This book will grip you and make you think. The humor will surprise you. I recommend it!

This book was full of life, of family problems, the politics of society, humor and mystery and I watched dave struggle to find himself around the chaos. It was like small segments of life that seemed about nothing in particular until after reading it when I realized it was about everything coming at Dave fast. My time was well spent reading it.