The Writing Room

This timely novel by Mickelson (The Weight of Everything) centers 18-year-old Maya, a budding writer who, like her siblings before her, is evicted from her father’s luxurious Manhattan apartment following her high school graduation. Believing his children should make their own way, as he did, Maya’s multimillionaire father forces her to get by without financial help beyond college tuition. Frustrated but stalwart, Maya plans to support herself by working at the public library and freelance-writing. Feeling abandoned by her mother, a doctor who moved back to her native Guatemala two years earlier, and her siblings who also left N.Y.C., she accepts her older coworker’s offer to share a studio apartment, where neighbors and a community activist group are frequent guests. Seeking a quiet refuge for her work, she joins a shared writing space managed by her distrustful neighbor Jake. Over the course of the smoothly wrought narrative, Maya encounters immigration issues challenging individuals in her new neighborhood, expands her literary leanings beyond her beloved classics, and pursues a relationship with Jake. Though Maya’s father reads like a one-dimensional villain, an opportunity to expose his financial support of a disturbing anti-immigrant politician injects tension throughout this accessible offering. Characters are racially diverse. Ages 13–up. (Nov.)