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Reviewed by Carine Engelbrecht for Readers' Favorite
Unbroken by J.S. Rosen presents a collection of stories woven around the common theme of fractured families. A do-it-yourself dollhouse that never made it to completion bears silent witness to a father struggling with depression. There is the awkward dance of non-verbal gestures between random strangers that transforms into a deeply personal encounter in Empty Cities. An overthinking, divorced dad must navigate the presence of a surprise companion in The New Ingredient. And in the title story, a daughter looks for clues to her father's disappearance from the family circle in the compulsively ritualistic attendance of baseball games - a losing team standing proxy for deeper and more intimate loss. Introspection, the interplay between a child's confusion and an adult's decoding of long-forgotten secrets, is often a key element of the stories.
The emotional register of each story is exact, finely tuned, and rings so true to life that you cannot help but be there for the main character. Whatever your personal life experience, you taste a little of the bitter pill an abandoned daughter or a divorced dad might feel as a ghostly reminder, never completely gone from the palate. Sometimes the tone is understated, but exquisitely crafted. No two families are alike, but common ground can often be found in unspoken trauma, in the inescapable dilemmas that life sometimes thrusts upon good, unsuspecting souls. Everything is tinged with gentle empathy for failure and failings. Despite the underlying thread suggesting that being human can sometimes be deeply painful, Unbroken by J.S. Rosen also reminds us that healing and recovery are possible.
