Hurdles in the Dark: My Story of Survival, Resilience, and Triumph by Elvira K. Gonzalez (review)

Reviewed by: Hurdles in the Dark: My Story of Survival, Resilience, and Triumph by Elvira K. Gonzalez Cassidy Russell Gonzalez, Elvira K. Hurdles in the Dark: My Story of Survival, Resilience, and Triumph. Roaring Brook, 2024 [320p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781250847850 $21.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781250847843 $11.99 Reviewed from digital galleys Ad Gr. 8-10 At the beginning of this early 2000s memoir, Kristy lives in a two-bedroom house with twelve family members, but she and her mom soon manage to move to a nicer neighborhood in her Texas border town when Kristy begins middle school. There they have running water, their neighbors don't get shot in their driveways, and Kristy can run on the track team at the fancy public school. Two years later, Kristy's mom is kidnapped by the Mexican cartel, and the resulting trauma when she returns leads to family fights that eventually land Kristy in a juvenile detention center. While locked up, she vows to become the best hurdler in the state so she can win a college scholarship and get out of Laredo. She's talented enough that the best coach in the city agrees to train her, but when their relationship becomes sexual, Kristy feels just as trapped by this abuse as she did back in the barrio and has to use all of her strength to find freedom. In a forward, Elvira "Kristy" Gonzalez writes that she decided to tell her story "the way it happened… Without my adult perspective," a choice that ultimately undermines her message. While an impassioned afterword delves into grooming and sexual abuse in youth sports, none of that clarity makes its way into the story itself, and Kristy's youthful confusion [End Page 360] about the nature of her relationship passes almost without comment, adding to the mostly unacknowledged complexity of the situation. Gonzalez drew heavily on childhood diaries in her writing, and her knack for dialogue, seamlessly weaving together English and Spanish slang, makes for an incredibly vivid story. Throughout the book, Kristy is desperate for healthy adult intervention, which she rarely gets; unfortunately, in this memoir, she doesn't get it from her adult self either.