Review by Booklist Review
Dugoni has produced a novel that, if it doesn't cross entirely over into John Irving territory, certainly nestles in close to the border. This isn't a crime novel (for which Dugoni is primarily known); rather, it's a kind of extended coming-of-age story about a man, Sam Hill, who was born with unusual eyes, grew up to be an eye doctor, forged lasting friendships (and one lasting and important enemy) in school, fell in love as a boy, fell in love again as a grown man, learned to live without his father and then without his mother, and finally, after years of trying to figure it out, comes to understand who Sam Hill really is. Told in two separate time lines (Sam as a boy, and Sam as a man) that eventually come together, and written in a gentle, introspective yet dramatic style that is very different from that of Dugoni's crime fiction, this is an inspirational story of a man who spends a lifetime getting to know himself.--Pitt, David Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Quite a departure from Dugoni's dark novels about Detective Tracy Crosswhite (The Trapped Girl, 2017, etc.): the frankly inspirational tale of a boy who overcomes the tremendous obstacles occasioned by the color of his eyes.Samuel James Hill is born with ocular albinism, a rare condition that makes his eyes red. Dubbed "the devil boy" by his classmates at Our Lady of Mercy, the Catholic school his mother, Madeline, fights to get him into, he faces loneliness, alienation, and daily ridicule, especially from David Freemon, a merciless bully who keeps finding new ways to torment him, and Sister Beatrice, the school's principal and Freemon's enabler, who in her own subtler ways is every bit as vindictive as he is. Only the friendship of two other outsiders, African-American athlete Ernie Cantwell and free-spirited nonconformist Michaela Kennedy, allows him to survive his trying years at OLM. In high school, Sam finds that nearly every routine milestonethe tryouts for the basketball team, the senior prom, the naming of the class valedictorianrepresents new challenges. Even Sam's graduation is blasted by a new crisis, though this one isn't rooted in his red eyes. Determined to escape from the Bay Area suburb of Burlingame, he finds himself meeting the same problems, often embodied in the very same people, over and over. Yet although he rejects his mother's unwavering faith in divine providence, he triumphs in the end by recognizing himself in other people and assuming the roles of the friends and mentors who helped bring him to adulthood. Dugoni throws in everything but a pilgrimage to Lourdes, and then adds that trip as well.Although the author acknowledges in a postscript that his story is perhaps "too episodic," his life of Sam Hell is inspiring and aglow with the promise of redemption. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
