The great thing about adolescent fiction is that the subject matter and plots are unbounded. Teen books are more magical, impossible and imaginative. The stories can and do go anywhere the author can imagine. Martha Brockenbrough’s The Game of Love and Death is another fine example of this.
In February 1920, Love and Death choose their newest pawns as infants: Love’s is Henry, a white boy of privilege; Death’s is Flora, the soon to be orphaned daughter of African-American jazz musicians.
In the spring of 1937, the game begins: will they fall in love or won’t they? Flora sings in, and actually owns part of the family’s nightclub, but her heart is in the skies and at the airport where she borrows a biplane and dreams of being the next Amelia Earhart.
Henry, a talented bass player, is poised to graduate from the private school he attends on scholarship with his best friend Ethan, whose family took him in upon his father’s suicide. While in pursuit of a story for Ethan’s father’s newspaper, they meet when the boys visit the airstrip where Flora works. With the players chosen, Love and Death have set the rules, rolled the dice and kept close, ready to influence, angling for dominance. Death has always won, every single time. Just look at every set of doomed lovers — Romeo and Juliet for example — throughout history. Maybe this time things will be different.
Brockenbrough’s clear, flowing writing style courses effortlessly amongst the four protagonists, giving each character equal depth. As the narration switches between Flora and Henry’s story and Love and Death’s next moves, the reader is served up a beautiful love story with dark twists and turns. The contrast between the youthful excitement of Henry and the sensible Flora and the ageless experience of the two immortals gains momentum as readers come to understand that Love and Death are not without their own complicated feelings.
Race, class, fate and choice all join Love and Death to play their parts in this haunting and masterfully orchestrated tale. This is sold as adolescent fiction and due to its magical realism, I would recommend this book for ages 12 and up. 3.5/5.
