from CityLimits.org...

In 1998, Michael Rosen, a well-off real-estate developer, accompanied his wife, Leslie, and his son, Ripton, to Tompkins Square Park. A white Jewish kid, Ripton joined a game of pick-up baseball with a group of black and Latino youngsters. Then the 7-year-old boy invited the group back to the Rosens' East Village penthouse for a round of Nintendo video game action. "Ripton didn't know it was unusual to invite a crowd home, kids who didn't look like him, spoke and dressed differently, lived under different circumstances. He didn't have the language of race," writes Rosen about the first encounter in his absorbing new release, What Else But Home: Seven Boys And An American Journey Between The Projects and The Penthouse.

And so began the first of a regular series of visits that the five children, who resided in nearby housing projects, paid to the Rosens. They're a naturally hyper bunch, inclined to use the language and tough posturing of the street. But the Rosens, despite repeated warnings from concerned friends and family members, manage to look beyond the surface to rapidly forge a bond with the boys. While baseball serves as the initial glue between their disparate worlds, it's Michael Rosen's curiosity about the nature of the boys' lives that leads to so much more. As trust develops between them, Rosen discovers the challenges of each boy's daily life, including single-parent households grappling with drug abuse and domestic violence. In "What Else But Home," Rosen details what he calls "our strange accidental family" that's created when he and his wife find themselves increasingly responsible for taking care of the boys without formally adopting them. Not surprisingly, the relationships suffer their share of setbacks - mistakes are made, a number of the adolescents struggle with anger, and the Rosens face marital difficulties of their own.

It's been 11 years since the young men have been a part of the Rosen family. And in "What Else But Home," the author documents their gradual evolution with great attentiveness. He uses a far less penetrating lens, however, on himself. There are glimpses and flashes of moments from his life apart from his adopted children - including memories of his own upbringing to the state of his career as a real estate developer. But they're brief and fleeting. Perhaps he prefers keeping the spotlight on the experience itself. But readers will be left wondering how his adopted family impacted - or changed, if at all - Rosen himself.

Interestingly, it's the seemingly intractable divisions over race and class that the Rosens and the youth shatter faster than any other. And doing so presents its share of comical moments, complete with puzzling inquiries from strangers - like the confounded reactions that many characters on the '80s-era sitcom "Diff'rent Strokes" had upon sighting Philip Drummond, a white affluent widower, alongside the two black Harlem adolescents he adopted.

Throughout the book, which documents the extended family's experiences over the course of six years, Rosen punctuates the storytelling with fluid writing that, at times, is poetic: "The game ended when the heat came off the day, before dusk into dinnertime." But a sharp reportorial eye allows the story to unfold in a relaxed pace that also enables the reader to experience what he describes as if it were all happening in the here and now. On the tough road to manhood, the boys are provided with unique opportunities and experiences - traveling well beyond their once-restricted boundaries to see the country and encounter an eclectic mix of prominent individuals, from Bobby Valentine, former manager of the New York Mets, to the iconic civil rights movement leader, Fred Shuttlesworth. While the narrative shows how tragically common are the chaotic circumstances that the boys had once found themselves in, it also illuminates an inspiring and highly unusual family arrangement.

- Curtis Stephen