The protagonist of Beyond the Mango Tree is Sarina, a twelve-year-old American girl whose family moved to Liberia for her father's job. She is strong-willed, a fact which both helps and hinders her as she tries to survive in a foreign country with her diabetic, frenzied mother. She is an interesting mix of sophistication and naivete. On the one hand, she uses poetic, adult language to describe her feelings and her surroundings. However, when she is dealing with the other characters, she sees the world very narrowly, and makes assumptions about them. For instance, when describing her mother, Sarina never explains why her mother may have cause to be the way she is.

She hints at morsels of understanding, but mostly she is resentful and aloof, treating her mother and her mother's diabetes and attending rages with disdain. To some extent, the disdain is...