At the beginning of Amy Pence's debut novel, Yellow (Red Hen Press; 232 pages), 12-year-old Eliza makes a strikingly topical observation about the Watergate scandal blowing up in the summer of 1973: "It was the summer that I learned that a president could lie." While the book opens as our country faces a political point of no return, Yellow tenderly lasers in on family relationships that dovetail with—and at times mimic—unforgettable national inflection points.

At the time, the scandal matters little to Eliza, who is more concerned with a mysterious slimy substance that has recently materialized in her yard. Attempting to explain it, she says, "It appeared overnight in our backyard, behind the pyracantha, between the plum and black gum trees. Looking like a puffed mouse, an octopus head, or the great brain on the cartoon character Gazoo. It was all yellow." Though the substance fools scientists (who ultimately dismiss it), Eliza is transfixed. She names it Yellow, and together with her little brother Clem, Yellow becomes a prism through which they see new versions of the world. The rest of the narrative details the lives of Eliza—shortened to Z in adulthood—and Clem in two coming-of-age stories sparked by their encounter and memories of Yellow while tracing their path through a series of national tragedies.

Pence writes in short, ephemeral chapters that give the sense of time passing quickly. Along with the point-of-view departures, the narrative occasionally breaks into factual timelines of world events that serve as landmarks in Z's life, most notably Hurricane Katrina. For some readers, these breaks may seem like an unnecessary disruption to the story. But Pence is making a deliberate choice to offer stark reminders of how these moments can quickly change the lives of a collective group and reinforce the coming-of-age theme experienced by Z, Clem, and the country as a whole.

Though this is her debut novel, Pence is an accomplished poet, and her prose is predictably beautiful and evocative. Dialogue is often short and snappy, giving scenes a dream-like quality. The power of Pence's prose is best on display when describing a hypnotizing scene in which 12-year-old Eliza believes she witnesses fairies emerging from Yellow: "I open my eyes wider, so I must be awake. Filaments turn to spheres, appear airborne, become a small universe of forms. They move toward me as fairies would with their uncanny lights." And a simple yet effective phrase that Eliza hears from Yellow, "One side loves the other," guides Z through life as she tries to understand her past and her place in the world. Z ultimately decides Yellow meant to tell her, "One side loves the other as the other." It's a phrase that ties together multiple narrative threads and serves as a reminder that much of what Z gains from Yellow is open to our own interpretation.

In addition to the strong prose, the narrative is carried by the complex relationship between Z and Clem, who bond over their experience with Yellow but take diverging paths following its disappearance. Z's story is fairly linear, Clem's winding. At a young age, Clem becomes obsessed with Skylab and astronaut Pete Conrad, and that obsession means he's always looking up to the stars while Z tends to look forward and backward for meaning. Z is more grounded in the reality of the world, while Clem believes himself to be a seeker for higher meaning. "You could say that Clem never recovered. From what, no one was quite sure," Z notes of her brother. They're deep, full characters whose bond drives the book's emotional ups and downs.

Ultimately, with ambitious narrative shifts and diverging storylines, Yellow swings for the fences but doesn't always connect. However, the detailed, lyrical prose stands out, and the way Pence is able to connect the touching, multi-layered relationship between Z and Clem with the series of national tragedies that sapped our country of its collective innocence warrants plenty of attention.