What Happened to Lani Garver

This has nothing to do with business culture, government, or most of the things I usually blog about--but it does have a lot to do with ethics, with the idea of acceptance of difference and with gender identity, angels, terminal illness, justice, conformity, and more.

I’ve just read a remarkable novel, What Happened to Lani Garver by Carol Plum-Ucci, published in 2002 by Harcourt. Written for older teens, it has a lot to say to anyone.
Told from the point of view of a teenage girl living an isolated and conventional life on an island off the New Jersey coast, the story involves this girl’s friendship with the gender-bending new kid in town, whom no one else likes, and how their brief friendship before his murder? disappearance? changes everything for her.

Amazon stocks the mass-market edition of this book. It may or may not be easy to track down the trade paper edition (ISBN is 0-15-216813-3)--but either edition will be worth the effort.