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CROWN CITY BOOK REVIEW: A Novel by Marisa Reichardt
A Shot at Normal
IN UNPRECEDENTED TIMES
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BY JENNIFER MOORE PHOTOS COURTESY OF MARISA REICHARDT
ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has made us not only keenly aware of our own and family members’ sniffles and coughs, but it has also tasked us with greater responsibility for protecting the health of others, including strangers on the streets and in grocery stores. The emerging availability of vaccines represents a new and hopeful chapter in our shared saga, but how we respond to the fast-tracked immunizations, as well as the challenge of balancing our own health and rights with the health and rights of others, depends on our unique circumstances and the impact the virus has had on us and our loved ones.
Into these unprecedented times drops Coronado High School classmate Marisa (Matherne) Reichardt’s eerily prescient third novel, A Shot at Normal, released to bookstores on February 16. Reichardt chronicles how individual choices impact public health through teen protagonist Juniper Jade, who launches a legal fight against her neo-hippie, anti-vaccinationist parents for her right to Marisa in Santa Monica with her acclaimed trio. access immunizations after she contracts a serious case of the measles and unwittingly spreads the disease. In 2018 and 2019, when she first conceived the idea and wrote her next book, Reichardt could not imagine just how relevant the themes and conflicts faced by Juniper, her family and her community would be. She intuitively captures the skepticism, fear, vulnerability, loss, anger and guilt so many of us have felt and expressed during this time of heightened powerlessness. Where this book hits a particular and timeless sweet spot is in its poignant and empathetic exploration of the differences in how risk is perceived, calculated, weighed and then responded to among members of one family.
I’ve been a fan of Marisa Reichardt’s writing since we were classmates at CHS, where her poetry was featured in our yearbook and her talent recognized by faculty when she was selected for the coveted Bobbie Booth Creative Writing Award during senior
year. Following and supporting our talented friend’s writing career over thirty years has been exciting and gratifying for Reichardt’s Islander classmates. And in 2021, when many of us in the Class of ’89 celebrate 50th birthdays, Reichardt also celebrates the publication of her third young adult novel, following the critical acclaim of previous works Underwater and Aftershocks. She has a knack for launching books centered on critical topics at just the right time. 2017’s Underwater follows Morgan, suffering from agoraphobia and navigating online learning after a tragic event at her school; last year’s Aftershocks focuses on the interactions and relationships of two teens trapped together after an earthquake, a book released to an audience also stuck at home in quarantine.
Themes of confinement and freedom are notable threads running through Reichardt’s novels as she insightfully depicts adolescence as the threshold between childhood and adulthood, dependence and independence, and adoption of family values and beliefs and establishment of one’s own. In A Shot at Normal, Juniper Jade and her siblings are homeschooled, due in part to her parents’ desire to implement their own curriculum, but also as a result of their exclusion from school for not having required vaccines. Juniper’s house faces the public high school across the street and she expresses a palpable longing to participate in the trappings of “normal” teen life: football games, dances, cafeteria lunches. When she meets Nico in the public library, she is invited into his world of high school friends, clubs and events. Marisa has characterized her novel as a veritable “love letter to adolescence,” and appropriately dedicated it to her 17-year-old daughter. Reichardt is mindful that when she wrote A Shot at Normal, she did not foresee that the COVID-19 pandemic would result in her daughter and her 12th-grade classmates missing many of the high school rites of passage Juniper ultimately experiences.
Coronado readers will recognize the “old Victorian resort” hotel featured in the novel’s small-town setting and reference to its haunted rooms and seaside ice rink. Also familiar is how elusive privacy and anonymity can feel within a tight-knit community, as well as the competing interests of personal confidentiality and public health during a crisis. Readers who have felt a tension between protecting personal interests and the rights of others during the pandemic and have explored the safety of COVID-19 inoculations will appreciate the nuanced depiction of Juniper and her parents in conflict over their beliefs and practices. We watch both factions thoughtfully weigh the pros and cons of vaccinating and empathize with characters who are all determined to make a decision they feel is most “right.”
In A Shot at Normal Marisa Reichardt’s most compelling message is for her daughter and her readers to “remain inquisitive,”
Marisa signing books in this new normal.
“examine the tough questions” and “seek truth,” important aspects of growing into critically thinking and expressive citizens of our community, nation and world. While Juniper and her parents, siblings and grandparents grapple individually with the broad impacts of her parents’ decisions, Reichardt sensitively examines how family relationships and roles shift and realign, and Juniper finds support in unexpected places. Between teens and grandparents, readers of all ages will find resonant and relatable voices among the novel’s characters. Hope ultimately prevails in my friend Marisa’s compelling and timely novel, not from a compromise that would subjugate the strong convictions of key characters, but from the recognition that love can sustain even amidst differing points of view and ways of life.
• Jenny Moore is a 1989 graduate of Coronado High School and current principal at Silver Strand Elementary School.
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