Laura Scalzo's heroine Julia in The Speed of Light in Air, Water, and Glass is a lover of fractals, those patterns in nature that look just the same from close up as they do from far away. "A fractal is a thing that's itself over and over again, forever," Julia explains, speaking of herself as much as of science. It's a perfect image for a book that flowers in a similar way, as three distinct stories--of a young girl who feels abandoned by her father, a boy searching for a lost grandfather, and a kind of Japanese princess who points the way ahead--find echoes in each other and in larger narratives from history books. But the real power of Scalzo's book is in its sentences--lyrical and insightful--which sweetly convey the thoughts and hopes and dreads of a young girl who figures out a way to shed old patterns of being and turn herself into something brand new.
--Vince Bzdek, Editor-in-Chief, Colorado Springs Gazette, and author of The Kennedy Legacy and Woman of the House.
In this beautifully written novel, Laura Scalzo manages to make sense of both twenty-first century teenagers and a fifty-year-old covert war. Every word rings true.
--Hunter Bennett, author of The Prodigal Rogerson
Julia is a wonderful character! She's awed by the universe and Walt Whitman, annoyed by her parents, and challenged by a mystery. In one tumultuous week she delves into the history of the Vietnam War, medieval Japan, and nineteenth century Washington, D.C. and the physics of fractals. Laura Scalzo skillfully weaves historical figures and an array of present-day characters into a sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, always fascinating novel.
--Deborah Johnson, Barstons Child's Play
2019-01-16
In Scalzo's debut novel, a teenager skips a STEM competition to pursue her own interests.
Fifteen-year-old Julia Bissette is an aficionado of fractals ("You can draw a circle with geometry, but you can draw a snowflake with fractal geometry"). She'd initially planned to go to a national conference that awards a monetary prize to the best fractal diagram produced by one of its young entrants. Instead, she spends a Holden Caulfield-esque week exploring her hometown of Washington, D.C., on her own terms. She uses her father's credit card to check into the Hay-Adams Hotel, and at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Julia meets Kal Kovac, a tall teenage boy trying to solve the mystery of why his grandfather never returned from the war. Julia and Kal hit it off, and they team up to investigate his relative's past—a journey that takes them to the National Archives, CIA headquarters,and, eventually, to the very competition that Julia's been avoiding. The present-day chapters are intercut with excerpts from Kal's grandfather's journal, including an account of his work during secret missions in Laos, and both narratives reach their resolutions in the book's closing pages. Julia is a compelling protagonist who's both self-aware and self-indulgent ("I guess I might be in trouble, but for what?"). Indeed, readers may have trouble deciding whether they want to root for her or shake some sense into her. Her relationship with Kal is refreshing, as it doesn't instantly transform into a romance; they're strangers united by a cause rather than sudden soul mates. Scalzo knows her District of Columbia setting well, and she develops it in detail throughout the story, allowing both Julia and the reader to become reacquainted with a familiar place. The prose is strong—quiet but evocative—and it does an excellent job of capturing the unanswered questions that drive Julia and Kal: "His isn't a war story I understand from school and field trips, a Civil War soldier breathing his last breath, Walt Whitman holding his hand at the Patent Office, not even a mile from the White House and President Lincoln himself."
An enjoyable story of teen independence and exploration.
