STREAMS OF BABEL
Carol Plum-Ucci
Harcourt Children’s Books
Suspense
ISBN: 9780152165567
432 pages

In Carol Plum-Ucci's all-too-realistic nightmarish tale set in 2002, several teen characters narrate their experiences as terrorism targets a small town.

Seventeen-year-old Cora Holman's mother is a drug addict, so Cora isn't entirely shocked when she dies. Aleese wouldn't be the first addict to overdose, and both mother and daughter have been sick with the flu. Cora is still humiliated, though --- even moreso when one of the paramedics responding to her call is her neighbor, Scott Eberman. Scott is young and good-looking; his brother, Owen, is in Cora's class at school. Another neighbor, popular Rain Steckerman's father, who happens to be a supervisor in the USIC (United States Intelligence Coalition), also shows up.

Scott mentions that his mother is also sick with the flu. He insists that Cora come over to his house to recuperate. Cora, however, refuses. She crawls into bed after the ambulance removes her mother's body, left with her usual resentful thoughts about her mother, complicated by Aleese's death. Cora had been raised by her grandmother while Aleese traveled the world as a freelance photographer. When Aleese injured her arm, she had returned home. Cora's grandmother died, but Cora and Aleese had never grown close, partly because Aleese had been addled by her morphine addiction. Cora did not even learn who or where her father might be. The central mystery of Cora's life is why her mother had never loved her. How could Aleese leave her daughter for so long?

Owen Eberman, meanwhile, has become sick. But he is not nearly as ill as his mother, who is suffering from a horrid headache. His mother is determined to drown her flu by guzzling gallons of tap water. Owen's good friend, Rain Steckerman, shows up. She, too, is suffering from flu symptoms, so Owen, Rain and Mrs. Eberman sit drinking water and watching a movie. But suddenly Mrs. Eberman requests that she be taken to the hospital. Her headache is worse, and her nose has begun to bleed.

At the hospital, her paramedic son Scott discusses the possibilities with Mr. Steckerman, who reassures him that it's a coincidence that his mother and Aleese both suffered the same flu symptoms and bled through their noses. Yet, it is unusual for Steckerman to be at the hospital, and he admits that he is sending information to the Centers for Disease Control.

Scott realizes Steckerman is eliminating the possibility that this strange illness could be caused by terrorists. And, although the USIC tested the water in their small town, Trinity Falls, and found it clean, Scott can't help suspecting the water his mother drank by the gallon. Steckerman also mentions they have experts watching terrorists the world over --- including a 16-year-old computer hacker in Pakistan who has been invaluable to U.S. intelligence. In fact, the young Pakistani informant has captured suspicious chat room dialogue, which seems to imply poisoned water somewhere.

Shahzad Hamdani, the young Pakistani computer hacker, picks up the story, even as Scott Eberman's mother dies in the hospital. At his uncle's computer cafe in a tiny village, Shahzad sits at a terminal spying on terrorists. His dangerous quest becomes even more hazardous when USIC officials decide to send him to America, where he believes the terrorists are carrying out their poisoned water mission. Can Shahzad help U.S. intelligence agents discover their targets soon enough to save them? Can the extremists be stopped?

Carol Plum-Ucci handles a huge cast of characters skillfully, making each well-rounded, individual and true-to-life. Consider young Tyler Ping, who enters late in the story. Tyler eats pills and hacks computers. He is bullied at school and yearns for his mother to act like she cares for him (Tyler's mother is distracted because of her shocking double life). And, although he's only been in the U.S. a year, he's completely fluent in English because "Words don't hate me like people do." Those sympathetic teens, plus the urgency of STREAMS OF BABEL's almost too frightening and realistic plot, make this book a gripping page-turner. Readers will feel compelled to immediately read to the end to learn how it all plays out.

        --- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon (terryms2001@yahoo.com)

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