We Never Asked for Wings by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

From the beloved New York Times bestselling author of The Language of Flowers comes her much-anticipated new novel about young love, hard choices, and hope against all odds. For fourteen years, Letty Espinosa has worked three jobs around San Francisco to make ends meet while her mother raised her children—Alex, fifteen, and Luna, just six—in their tiny apartment on a forgotten spit of wetlands near the bay. But now Letty’s parents are returning to Mexico, and Letty must step up and become a mother for the first time in her life. Navigating this new terrain is challenging for Letty, especially as Luna desperately misses her grandparents and Alex, who is falling in love with a classmate, is unwilling to give his mother a chance. Letty comes up with a plan to help the family escape the dangerous neighborhood and heartbreaking injustice that have marked their lives, but one wrong move could jeopardize everything she’s worked for and her family’s fragile hopes for the future. Vanessa Diffenbaugh blends gorgeous prose with compelling themes of motherhood, undocumented immigration, and the American Dream in a powerful and prescient story about family. Praise for We Never Asked for Wings “Deftly blends family conflict with reassurance: Wings is like Parenthood with class and immigration issues added for gravitas.”—People (Book of the Week) “This poignant story will stay in readers’ hearts long after the last page. . . . Diffenbaugh weaves in the plight of undocumented immigrants to her tale of first- and second-generation Americans struggling to make their way in America. Moving without being maudlin, this story avoids the stereotypes in its stark portrayal of mothers who just want the best for their children.”—RT Book Reviews (Top Pick) “Diffenbaugh is a storyteller of the highest order: her simple but poetic prose makes even this most classically American story sing with a special kind of vulnerable beauty.”—Bustle “[A] gripping, heartfelt exploration of a mother’s love, resilience and redemption.”—Family Circle “Satisfying storytelling . . . Diffenbaugh delivers a heartwarming journey that mixes redemption and optimistic insight [and] confirms her gift for creating shrewd, sympathetic charmers.”—Kirkus Reviews

Not so bad. Not so great. Was really ready for it to end by about 70 pages from the end. The story line of this was good.. it just had so much potential to be full of emotion, and most of it fell flat.

Diaclaimer: I probably was also disappointed because of how much I loved The Language of Flowers.

Diffenbaugh admits in the afterword to this book that it was difficult to follow up her incredibly successful debut, The Language of Flowers. I doubt We Never Asked for Wings will wind up being chosen by quite as many book clubs as its predecessor, but it's still a good read. Letty is an interesting and not always sympathetic character who is suddenly forced to be a real mother to her two children after years of surrendering that role to her own mother while Letty worked multiple jobs to support the family. We meet Letty as she is basically abandoning 15 year old Alex and 6 year old Luna to chase after her mother, who has decided to return to Mexico, and beg her to come back. Watching Letty slowly and painfully find her way as a parent, making lots of mistakes along the way, would be more rewarding if it didn't seem like the men in her life, including Alex's father and an attractive co-worker, rescue her almost every time she's in crisis.

The chapters told from Alex's POV at times feel like a different novel, a YA romance with two star-crossed teenagers. But it's also about Alex's journey to establish a new relationship with the mother who was never more than a fleeting presence in his life yet is now trying to set limits on his behavior. Both he and Letty are trying to figure out who they are after their world is shaken up.

Diffenbaugh paints a vivid picture of life in a mostly-deserted low-income apartment complex a stone's throw from the San Diego airport and the marshes of the bay, in sharp contrast to the middle-class life that Letty can see but can't afford in nearby Mission Hills. The feathers that Letty's father used in his artwork, the native birds and the frequent airplanes illustrate the wing metaphor that give the book its title. Maybe not as detailed and cozy as the flowers in her first novel, but still an appropriate symbol. Diffenbaugh may have worried, but her writing career seems to be in no danger of crash landing.