at the circumstances surrounding the U.S. Gulf War in the early 1990s and the U.S. bombing of Iraq in 1998, Ritter once again adopted an historical setting in a story about a boy's attempt to reconnect with his father and discover who he is in the process, this time using the "festering wound" of the Vietnam War. "There are many 'walls' in 13-year-old Tyler's life: the literal wall of the baseball field he wants to clear with a mighty slam; the Vietnam Memorial Wall bearing his grandfather's name; and the invisible wall Tyler's dad has built around himself since causing the death of Tyler's sister nine years earlier." "Beginning with the lines, 'People say time heals all wounds. I used to think so. Now I know better. Time won’t heal anything. Time is nothing but a stack of yesterdays,' Over the Wall is a study not only of one family's case of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but the collective case of PTSD which Ritter believes the entire nation has suffered ever since the end of the Vietnam War. When young Tyler Waltern is invited to spend the summer in New York City with his cousin, he launches a book-length journey to find out what, if anything, truly will heal his family's wounds. Tyler is determined to make it onto the roster of an all-star baseball team. However, his explosive temper gets in the way of his obvious talent. With the help of his pretty cousin and with the sage advice of his coach, a Vietnam vet who also suffers from PTSD, the young man manages to navigate the risky waters of this passage. In this novel, Ritter parallels the parable of the Good Samaritan to show how, step by daunting step, Tyler's crippling anger dissolves into compassion for the "battered man" who was once his enemy." "By the end", noted Todd Morning in a review for School Library Journal, "Tyler has gained a level of self-awareness by unraveling some of the tangled stories in his family's past and understanding the intricacies lying beneath the surface of life." A Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote that Ritter "tackles tough subjects relating to violence in sports, religious hypocrisy, and the Vietnam War while creating layers of metaphors which neatly unfold..." and described the novel as a "powerful lesson in compassion." Writing in The ALAN Review, Patricia K. Ladd noted "Readers are left questioning societal