ALA Booklist (Thu May 01 00:00:00 CDT 2014)

It's 1951, and 17-year-old Lily, the only Chinese person in her Kansas City high school, has become the object of intense bullying. Meanwhile, her dorky but lovable younger brother has discovered a strange lacquered box hidden in the attic. It came from Lily's birth mother r "gone mom" d inside is a jumble of strange objects that help Lily learn about her history and her ties to a beautiful new acquisition in the Chinese wing of her local art museum. Her adopted parents are no help, begging her to focus on moving forward instead of "living in reverse." Lily's first-person narration captures her frustration at school and with her family, her anger over the insults she hears on a daily basis, her guilt about searching out her biological mom, and her reluctance to share her past with the people who love her, all in a jolting tone that matches the fits and starts of her struggle to find her provenance. Stuber (Crossing the Tracks, 2010) offers a poetic, introspective story of a girl caught between two worlds.

Horn Book (Fri Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2014)

Adopted Lily faces racism due to her Asian heritage in this novel set in Korean Warera Kansas City. She struggles to come to terms with her abandonment by her birth mother ("Gone Mom") by piecing together clues to her past she finds in a wooden box in the attic. Readers will be drawn in by this poignant tale of finding one's true identity.

Kirkus Reviews

Rendered in beautifully poetic prose, Murphy's debut novel follows Capt. James McFarlane of Canada's "A" Company, 1st Irish, in war. Capt. James McFarlane is on the brink. It is September 1944, the eve of a great battle, he has not heard from his wife, and he is physically and mentally exhausted. He's noticeably losing his grip. At first blush, though, McFarlane seems normal enough, "happy that he is in a situation where he can test himself to his physical, mental, emotional and spiritual limits." He jokes with fellow soldiers and seems well-liked by fellow officers and his men. But piece by intricate piece, his motivations and fragile psyche are revealed. Tiny sips from a flask grow into a major drinking problem that leads him to strike an enlisted man, miss an important pre-battle inspection and ultimately send his assistant in search of rum in the midst of a firefight. Through dreams, flashbacks and letters, readers learn that his decision to join the army was more out of inadequacy and restlessness than patriotism, and this decision to voluntarily leave his new bride, Marianne, dealt a severe blow to his marriage. While exploring McFarlane's inner landscape, Murphy meticulously conveys the realities of war, from the ruined Italian countryside to the mixture of boredom and anxiety haunting the soldiers. All is done in exquisite style that places readers squarely in the action: "Here and there, flash by flash, are illumined trees, houses, hills, recoiling guns and men in action, captured in flared snapshots, yellow and orange flicker, red glow, a purple bruise of clouds." Murphy uses stream of consciousness throughout, but in the dénouement, that stream explodes into a roiling sea breaking on the various shores of McFarlane's inner and outer realities. An empathetic yet flawed man drives this wonderful novel, the first from an author ready for a glittering literary career.