Exquisitely written debut novels with free-verse poetry

There is more than just similarity in book jackets that link two recently published middle-age novels together. “Inside Out & Back Again” and “Under the Mesquite” are both debut novels for authors Thanhha Lai and Guadalupe Garcia McCall. Each draws from personal experiences as immigrants to the United States and tells semi-autobiographical stories in free-verse poetry as dated journal entries.

Both female protagonists in the novels find difficulties in the new country, particularly learning a new language, but helpful teachers serve as support. The girls contend with a missing parent in each story — one assumed deceased and the other dying of cancer.

While the many similarities may suggest duplicated stories, this is not the case. Each novel is unique, exquisitely written, and full of poignant and personal experiences drawn from cultural changes that are made. To attest to these outstanding qualities, “Inside Out & Back Again” and “Under the Mesquite” have each recently won national book awards for young readers.

“INSIDE OUT & BACK AGAIN,” by Thanhha Lai, HarperCollins, $15.99, 261 pages (f)(ages 8-12)

Ten-year-old Ha’s father has been missing in action for nine years fighting the Vietnam War. Ha, her mother and three older brothers flee their threatened city of Saigon, first traveling by crowded boat to Guam, then to Alabama where sponsors promise refuge and employment. In free-verse poetry, Ha relates her family’s harrowing escape and a year’s hardships in a new country.

Ha misses her homeland, her friends, the rain, the traditions and food especially papaya from the tree in their backyard. Alabama offers only dry flat landscape, heckling neighbors (they only relent after the family has been “dipped” in a Baptist church), dirty mismatched furniture (“Even at our poorest/we always had/beautiful furniture/and matching dishes”) and clothes that are ridiculed. (She came to school in a flannel nightgown because it more closely resembled other classmates’ dresses.)

Worst of all were the racial slurs, the bullies who followed her from school. She remembers being a star pupil in Vietnam but now studies in a class of younger children. The language is hard, “Would be simpler/if English/and life/were logical.”

Her mother says, “Be grateful.”

Ha replies, “I’m trying.”