Rox. native launches writing career with `Breathing Room'

Rox. native launches writing career with `Breathing Room'

With her diverting "Breathing Room" (Pocket Books), an auspicious debut, Roxbury daughter Patricia Elam delivers a blast of a first novel.

Elam has the gift of good storytelling down: an involving story line that moves right along, characters you feel you might well know, and insights on the complexities of living, including the urgency felt by a teen aged girl to live larger than she is able to handle.

Bostonians's interest will be perked by a thinly disguised portrait of Elma Lewis in the fictionalized persona of Philandra Snow, the teenage Zadi's exacting dancing school teacher.

To the book …