Books like At Risk

Some readers have complained that this book--written about a family coping with an AIDS diagnosis at the height of the AIDS panic of the late 1980s/early 1990s--feels dated. While I recognize that it is no longer the "current events" novel it was originally conceived and written as, I feel that this book serves a very different purpose now--as a reminder of the very real concerns and struggles that people faced during that time when almost nothing was known about AIDS, and thereby everything was feared. The book immerses you in the 1980s--down to the music of Madonna and Duran Duran, and the poster of Bruce Springsteen on the wall--in order to show you what this time, now distant, was like for a small-town family who was on the frontlines of this crisis. The details are very realistic because they were current at the time. I think that we might forget, looking back from a vantage point of twenty years later, that in the early days of AIDS, people were in fact irrationally frightened. People did things that now seem ridiculous, because they worried that they might get it, that their children could also be infected. The sad truth is reflected in the book--some people's children were in fact infected. Some people discovered that they had developed AIDS by completely random chance, and then had to deal with the consequences that came with it.I loved the characters in this book, even the supporting characters of doctor and principal. They felt real, even if their actions didn't always make sense to me, and I was invested in them. The only part I disliked was the ending, which seemed to lose focus on the last page. At Risk is a fast read, and there is no doubt that the subject matter is sad, but there is definitely something to be gained by spending the time with it.