Boris Fishman - Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo

Fishman’s acclaimed first novel, A Replacement Life, winner of the Sophie Brody Medal, explored identity in terms of history, cleverly dramatizing how manipulation of the official record can change a person’s life. His second work of fiction takes on even more mysterious facets of identity. What makes eight-year-old Max suddenly go wild—eating grass, running with animals, sitting in the creek? And what does this behavior have to do with the cryptic message about rodeo work that his birth mother left with the boy? Max’s adoptive parents, Russian immigrants in New Jersey, head west to their son’s Montana birthplace to work out the puzzles—and find some surprises in their own lineage.