I’ll Give You a Reason

Lopez debuts with an impressive collection focused on Dominicans and Dominican Americans trying to make lives for themselves in Newark, N.J. In the visceral opener, “Great American Scream Machine,” a teen named Eva has recently discovered she’s undocumented (her parents kept her immigration status hidden from her). She’s initially apathetic, but eventually expresses her pent-up frustration and fears by breaking windows at an abandoned warehouse with a classmate. Many of the stories reveal the gap between the characters’ public personas and the frustration, pain, and turmoil they go through in private. For example, the unnamed narrator of the title story routinely torments one of her elementary-school classmates. But in an unexpected turn of events, the roles reverse when her classmate invites her to a playdate. In “Bear Hunting Season,” Nina, a young widow, plunges back into the dating world a year after her husband’s death, though she continues to carry his ashes in her purse and routinely dips her fingers into them. While on a date with a fellow widower, Nina discovers that he also relies on his wife’s possessions to ignite his passions. These stories credibly portray the experience of trying to rise above the constraints of one’s circumstances. (Apr.)