“Behold the Dreamers” by Imbolo Mbue

It’s been awhile since I read a book I did not want to put down. I don’t even like the term “page turner”. But BEHOLD THE DREAMERS got me. When Jenga and Neni, a young immigrant couple from Cameroon, become involved financially and personally with Clark and Cindy, a wealthy couple living the corporate dream, Jenga is placed in an impossible bind which powerfully affects him and his family.

I have no idea how this book landed on my home office bookshelf, but the cover and description and the number of awards it’s received intrigued me. I stayed intrigued. I pulled for Jenga and Neni, who have immigrated to New York where they struggle to make a home for themselves and their two children in the midst of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. I ached for them. I did not want to stop reading, which, in my world, signals one fine novel.

Jenga and Neni are portrayed so authentically—the author shows their best, loving, competent selves as well as the demons that emerge under the stresses they endure, and, though I hated what they did sometimes, I never stopped caring about them.

There’s a lot going on in BEHOLD THE DREAMERS, with all the legal and cultural barriers Jenga and Neni encounter and their efforts to live the dream in their beloved and idealized “America”. Imbolo Mbue handles the story lines deftly and gracefully. And did I say how much I WANTED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED?

Such a good book. I hope you read it.

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