Harper
March 2016
On Sale: March 1, 2016
Featuring: Maya Rubin; Alex Rubin
ISBN: 0062384368 EAN: 9780062384362 Kindle: B00Z74LV2K Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
Maya Shulman and Alex Rubin met in 1992, when she was a Ukrainian exchange student with βa devil in [her] headβ about becoming a chef instead of a medical worker, and he the coddled son of Russian immigrants wanting to toe the water of a less predictable life.
Twenty years later, Maya Rubin is a medical worker in suburban New Jersey, and Alex his fatherβs second in the family business. The great dislocation of their lives is their eight-year-old son Max β adopted from two teenagers in Montana despite Alexβs view that βadopted children are second-class.β
At once a salvation and a mystery to his parents β with whom Maxβs biological mother left the child with the cryptic exhortation βdonβt let my baby do rodeoβ β Max suddenly turns feral, consorting with wild animals, eating grass, and running away to sit face down in a river.
Searching for answers, Maya convinces Alex to embark on a cross-country trip to Montana to track down Maxβs birth parents β the first drive west of New Jersey of their American lives. But itβs Maya whoβs illuminated by the journey, her own erstwhile wildness summoned for a reckoning by the unsparing landscape, with seismic consequences for herself and her family.
Donβt Let My Baby Do Rodeo is a novel about the mystery of inheritance and what exactly it means to belong.
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