At Risk was published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in 1988, at the height of the American AIDS crisis — when the disease was still widely misunderstood and its victims stigmatized. Amanda Farrell is eleven years old, a gifted gymnast, living with her family in a small Massachusetts town. She is diagnosed with AIDS, contracted through a blood transfusion she received as a toddler.
The community’s response is the novel’s subject: neighbors who were friends become terrified strangers. Amanda’s brother is bullied at school. The family is isolated — not by the disease but by fear and ignorance. Some people behave well (a few neighbors, Amanda’s doctor); most behave badly; and the Farrells must navigate a world that has suddenly become hostile while also caring for a dying child.
Hoffman wrote the novel to put a human face on the AIDS crisis — to demonstrate that the disease could strike anyone, that its victims were not the dangerous outsiders of popular imagination but children, mothers, ordinary families. The novel was controversial on publication (some parents objected to it being taught in schools) and remains important as a document of the era’s panic.
Collecting At Risk
First edition (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1988): Hardcover with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $20–$50
- Very good/very good: $10–$20