Facing the Sun

Small, close communities where everyone knows each other are fertile grounds for gossip and often hold the most secrets. The same can be said about good friends. KeeKee, Eve, Faith, and Nia have been best friends forever, but when their Carribean community begins to change, relationships fray and secrets begin to surface.

Developers see potential in the community, and their first act is to block off part of public beach, the only access to the church where Faith’s father preaches. When security guards usher the four friends, along with KeeKee’s brother Toons, off a stretch of beach the community had always used, including to get to Faith’s father’s church, questions and distrust begin to surface and well-kept secrets are undone. The community knows the development will disrupt some of their shared routines but couldn’t predict the extent of the disruption to their lives collectively and individually. When the church burns down, people begin pointing fingers and assigning blame without proof. As speculations fly, the tension between Nia and KeeKee’s mothers intensifies: KeeKee’s mother’s care-free parenting style had always clashed with the tight grip Nia’s mother preferred, keeping Nia too busy writing a community paper to get into any trouble or to explore her passion for cooking. Their behaviour doesn’t make sense to their children, and both mothers think they’re doing what’s best for their children: keeping a secret they think will do more harm if shared, and sheltering children from the truth doesn’t always protect them.

Like most teenagers, and many adults, best friends KeeKee, Nia, Eve, and Faith envy each other in some way: Keekee wishes her mother showed more concern about her activities while Nia wants her mother to grant her a little bit of freedom; Eve wishes her mother wouldn’t place so much responsibility on her while her father recovers from a heart attack while Faith is tired of her family treating her like a child, going out of their way to keep her free from worrying about her mother’s dementia. As the book progresses, readers are given insight into the behaviour of the adults close to the friends.

In addition to individual problems and conflict, the community is also divided over the gentrification of their neighbourhood which will have both positive and negative impacts on the area. The community wasn’t consulted before the project was approved, only finding out about it the day access to the frequently used beach, as well as the only pathway to the community church, was fenced off. Temporary access to the church appeases some until it’s burned to the ground in an act of arson. As people lay blame and take sides for or against the development, secrets kept for years come out and relationships young and old are tested; however, bonds survive, and are strengthened by, the upheaval.

Janice Lynn Mather’s characters are likeable and relatable, flaws and all. Facing the Sun starts with children and parents feeling they will never understand each other; by the end, the generations come to see they have a lot more in common than they thought: the teens, their parent’s behaviour and actions, regardless of how irrational they seem, aren’t intended to embarrass or hurt, but to protect them from mistakes their parents had to learn about the hard way, and together they learn that, no matter how embarrassing the problem or question, the best path is to listen openly to each other and to be honest. Readers will slowly come around to cheering on the adults as well as the teens in the book and may even see the adults in their lives in a different light.

Facing the Sun would be a great book for adults and teens to read together, discussing how both the teens and adults could have handled things differently, perhaps making difficult real-life conversations easier. Whether read for pleasure or a conversation starter, Facing the Sun will be hard to put down!