Book Review: Twenty Dollar Bill

Twenty Dollar Bill by Elmore Hammes
purchased for my Kindle from Smashwords website

I bought this book after my mother accidentally suggested this novel to me. She sent me an email thinking I might like this book. I checked it out and thought it looked interesting and gave it a try. As soon as I started I could not put it down. I kept thinking to myself, "How did the author think of so many avenues for a twenty dollar bill to travel?" Let me back up and explain the premise.

The novel follows the life(not really a life, but you get my point)of a twenty dollar bill starting with a woman named Claire who gives away a twenty to a homeless man. From this point the dollar bill will go through forty two other people in the novel going full circle. This twenty dollar bill travels everywhere and through all walks of life.

What I loved about this book are several things. First, the amazing ability of making a dollar bill the main character. The author set the book up where each chapter is the person who is in possession of the money. It will provide a quick backdrop of how they got themselves to the situation to receive the money and then how they get to moving it along. Chapters are short and this is not a long read which is perfect. As you read these little snippets into the lives of all these people the book makes you think about how quickly we are to judge and assess others around you. There were several times where I remember thinking certain things as some of the characters and then I read the back story to the person and realize that maybe my judgments were in error.

As you can tell I loved this book. It was new and refreshing read. Is this young adult? No, but there is nothing that would keep me from not letting a young adult read. Nothing is inappropriate, but this would just be classified as good old fiction(remember when labels were that simple?).