What They Found: Love on 145th Street, by Walter Dean Myers

This collection of 15 interconnected short stories are about a group of characters centered around 145th Street in Harlem. The central theme of the collection is love of all kinds. Including parental love, romantic love, the love between close friends, and the love of siblings for each other, these stories are emotionally satisfying while not being saccharine. They explore the challenges of poverty, war, single parenthood, and more. Many of the characters pop up in different stories. This book is a followup to an earlier collection by Mr. Myers, 145th Street: Short Stories, and many of the characters appeared in that collection as well.

I found all of the stories to be well-written. While dealing with serious subjects, there is still a lot of humor in this book. Although Mr. Myers often writes for the young adult audience, this collection would be appropriate for all ages. I haven't read the earlier collection, my prior experience with Mr. Myers' fiction being limited to Sunrise over Fallujah, mentioned here. The war in Iraq, written about so eloquently by Mr. Myers in Sunrise, reappears in the 15th story in this collection, "Combat Zone," which is about soldier Curtis Mason and the friendships and love he finds in Iraq.

Walter Dean Myers. What They Found: Love on 145th Street. Wendy Lamb Books/Random House Children's Books, 2007. 243 pages. ISBN 9780385321389. Advance Readers' Copy.