Red Weather by Pauls Toutonghi Reviewed by Marjorie Kehe
Christian Science Monitor
"You really have to pity Yuri Balodis. In addition to all the normal trials of teenagedom (a skinny, unimpressive body; a sprinkling of pimples; and a girl who likes him fine until he starts liking her too well), he's saddled with a pair of well-meaning but embarrassingly ethnic immigrant parents and a last name that means 'pigeon' in Latvian. Add to that the fact that the Balodis live squeezed into a decaying, low-rent apartment in downtown Milwaukee. ('There was no fame magically coursing through my city's rusted water pipes,' Yuri writes sadly of the city in which his parents landed after fleeing the Soviet Union.)" Read the entire Christian Science Monitor review.