WE ARE CALLED TO RISE is a multiple-perspective novel --- the type where, say, four quite deliberately disparate characters are shown to be inextricably linked and come together in an inevitable, epiphanic sort of way. Here we have Avis, an aging housewife whose family is dissolving; Roberta, a court-appointed special advocate; Luis, a traumatized soldier; and Bashkim, the eight-year-old child of Albanian refugees. Their narratives converge in what appears meant to bring out the multifaceted nature of a family tragedy. Ultimately, though, the novel falls short of the grandiose scope it lays out for the reader.

"The Bashkim chapters address the hardships and joys of a refugee  immigrant family with unexpected depth, particularly from an eight-year-old child’s perspective."

This type of novel lives or dies by the strength and vibrancy of its point-of-view characters, yet three of those four perspectives are unable to carry their own weight, either narratively or aesthetically. After a few chapters, it becomes evident that the real subject of the book is the ingenuous Bashkim. Author Laura McBride deserves due commendation for capturing the voice of a child in a believable way, encapsulating both the precocious and the naïve. Bashkim’s struggling family owns an ice cream truck that circles the Las Vegas desert, and his sweet, simple voice brings welcome relief to otherwise tedious perspectives.

The voices of Avis, Roberta and Luis don’t quite deliver. Avis’s chapters are plagued by near-constant flashbacks to different points in her life, which, though serving to illuminate the character’s background, appear so frequently and disruptively as to make her chapters feel decidedly contrived. Roberta, the court-appointed special advocate, is a character of little interest who seems added to the novel almost as an afterthought. Luis, unlike Avis and Roberta, at least bears an important and obvious relationship to the central plot as Bashkim’s penpal. His character serves a likable function, but his often-stilted diction, while appropriate given the character’s experience of wartime trauma, rarely rises to the level of humanity portrayed in the Bashkim or even the Avis chapters.

All this being said, WE ARE CALLED TO RISE is not a bad novel. I left the book with the strong impression that there was a good novel somewhere in there, but that it was buried beneath a load of tedious and difficult trappings that ultimately felt unnecessary. The Bashkim chapters address the hardships and joys of a refugee  immigrant family with unexpected depth, particularly from an eight-year-old child’s perspective. His simple diction carries far more narrative weight than the forced flashbacks present elsewhere.

Laura McBride is no doubt a canny writer. The ambitious scope of this first novel outstrips the author’s narrative control, but there remains a story of great suffering, compassion and distinction at the heart of this effort. The writing, however innocuous at times, has no trouble holding the reader’s attention. WE ARE CALLED TO RISE makes for a fine, quick summer read; its detriment comes when it attempts to be more.