Lori Aurelia Williams is "a remarkable writer with unlimited potential," in the opinion of the PEN American Center committee that awarded her the 2002 Phyllis Naylor working-writer fellowship. The committee members also pointed out that in Williams' books, her characters are delineated "well and quickly by their flowing natural dialogue." Williams's highly regarded first two novels for young adults, When Kambia Elaine Flew in from Neptune and Shayla's Double Brown Baby Blues, tell of Shayla, a young African-American girl from a poor Houston neighborhood who, marginalized at school and home, finds her life turned around by friends and the secrets they keep from the adult world. One friend suffers from child abuse and the other from alcoholism, and in the course of the narratives, Shayla must decide where to draw the line between keeping secrets and helping out these young women. Shayla is a "smart, sensitive narrator," according to...