AMERICAN BASTARD by Jan Beatty reviewed in International Swans!

We are taught that a story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. We are taught that a girl who ventures on a quest to find her lost parents will become whole when she finds them; we are taught that this girl will find happiness.

But the truth is, life doesn’t usually happen in this way. Sometimes the “story begins at an impasse” as Patrice Staiger writes. Some stories are erased at their roots. What story grows from an interrupted start like that?