Starred review from October 13, 2014
Williams turns in a riveting tale about 15-year-old Patson Moyo, who becomes a diamond farmer, working in the Marange diamond fields of 2006 Zimbabwe, to help provide for his family. Patson risks life and limb, hoping to find common ngodas or ultra-rare girazis—diamonds that could change his life for the better. But when the army moves in and takes the fields for themselves, Patson’s freedom is stripped away. A rapid string of brutal tragedies follow, including death and dismemberment, and Patson’s only hope for survival is to follow his younger sister to South Africa, aided by a mysterious Congolese mercenary. All the while, he is relentlessly hunted by a powerful military leader who thinks Patson is the key to finding girazis. Williams draws from real events to bring this harrowing story to life, infusing Patson’s narrative with terrifying accuracy. Along the way, the story crosses over with Williams’s 2011 novel, Now Is the Time for Running, though readers need not be familiar with that book to be gripped and horrified by the troubles facing Patson and his nation. Ages 12–up. Agent: Wendy Schmalz, Wendy Schmalz Agency.
October 1, 2014
In this sprawling, messy but compelling epic, a teenager and his family join other desperate Zimbabweans seeking a future in Marange's diamond mines. Patson and his little sister, Grace, don't want to leave Bulawayo, but hyperinflation has decimated the family's income. Their stepmother, Sylvia, nags their schoolteacher father, Joseph, into moving the family to Marange, where her brother James controls a diamond-mining syndicate. Unaware of the region's chaotic violence, they survive the journey only with help from an enigmatic Congolese. James welcomes his sister, while housing the rest of the family in a stifling, smelly tobacco shed. Joseph's promised teaching position proves illusory-there's no school. Mining's the only job, and it's mandatory. Hiding their finds from James means trouble, yet many miners try, including the youth syndicate Patson joins. His gentle, broken father doesn't share his fantasies of striking it rich. Brutal mayhem, already the norm, increases when soldiers arrive, commanded by a vicious sadist. Lacking the compact power of its 2011 companion novel, Now Is the Time for Running, this tale is operatic in scope and intensity (no accident-Williams directs the Capetown Opera). Horrific events proliferate, generating a kind of sympathetic PTSD in readers. What keeps them engaged is concern for Patson and those he loves in a world that's all too real. A haunting, harrowing tale guaranteed to give "bling" a whole new meaning. (author notes, glossary). (Fiction. 12-18)
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October 1, 2014
Gr 9 Up-Patson Moyo's life is perfectly ordinary. He is on the cross-country team with his best friend, Sheena. His father, a teacher, is often a little dreamy but a wonderful storyteller. His perky little sister, Grace, loves to play games on his cell phone. Patson never would have guessed that his smart, university-graduate father, who had won the Outstanding Teacher Award four years in a row, can barely make ends meet, due to government corruption and the massive devaluation of the Zimbabwean dollar. Egged on by Patson's stepmother, Sylvia, the Moyos decide to improve their situation by traveling to Marage where Sylvia's brother lives and it is claimed that there are "diamonds for everyone." The power of Patson's story is rooted in the very mundane rites of daily life that even modern American teenagers will find familiar-the emoticon-filled texting between Patson and his sister, the angst and anxiety of a kiss between friends-juxtaposed with the real and menacing danger of the brutal whims of corrupt army officers and traitorous fellow miners. Diamond Boy is a companion novel to Williams's other book about war-torn Zimbabwe, Now Is the Time for Running (Little Brown, 2013). Readers of his past work will find a few familiar characters here, but even readers new to Williams's fiction will be similarly engrossed by his deft, unflinching prose. Teens will be left haunted by Patson's harsh yet essentially hopeful journey, where greed, despair, luck, and wonder intertwine on the diamond fields of Marage.-Evelyn Khoo Schwartz, Georgetown Day School, Washington, DC
Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
November 1, 2014
Grades 7-10 When Patson's impoverished Zimbabwean family travels to their country's Marange diamond fields in search of a new life, nothing but trouble awaits them. The father's promised job as a teacher doesn't materialize, and both he and Patson find themselves working as miners. Their lives are suddenly at further risk when the military assumes control of the fields. Patson flees and steps on a land mine, losing most of his left leg. Still, against all odds, he must journey to South Africa to rescue his little sister, who has been abducted. In hot pursuit is his bte noire, Commander Jesus, head of the forces that took over the mines and murdered hundreds of miners in the process. Why the evil commander is pursuing Patson can't be revealed here, but suffice it to say, high stakes are involved. Williams' fast-paced, tension-packed story is filled with cliff-hangers, perils, and improbabilities that are occasionally overwhelming and push the story, at times, dangerously close to melodrama. In the end, though, this is a satisfying and eminently readable novel from the author of Crocodile Burning (1992).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)
January 1, 2015
Formerly middle-class but now made destitute by Zimbabwe's runaway inflation, Patson and his family leave Bulaway for a new life in Marange, where Patson's stepmother has family. Her brother James Banda runs a syndicate, where thousands of poor miners pan for low-grade industrial diamonds, hoping to find finer gemstones, which they hand over to Banda in exchange for a tiny share of the profits. But when Patson's family arrives in Marange after a harrowing journey, they find that the high school is closed and Patson's father's promised teaching position is gone; Patson and his father are forced to become miners for Banda. With so much money at stake, the diamond fields are a brutal, dangerous place where smugglers and contraband dealers trade lives for untold wealth, but the mines become even more dangerous when President Mugabe's army takes over diamond production. Structuring his story around the 2008 Marange diamond field massacre, Williams tells a tale of grim inhumanity, but does so through a protagonist whose optimism falters only after he receives a life-altering injury. Williams's portrayal of middle-class, cell phone-carrying African youth will give readers a different perspective on the modern continent, even as some of its people still cling to the belief in shavi, or luck granted by the ancestors. Patson's shavi is strong, but the diamonds' ability to either transform or destroy a life is something he continues to wrestle with through the very last page. anita l. burkam
(Copyright 2015 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)