This portrayal of a diamond in the rough uses brutal reality to create deeply human empathy.
In this debut thriller, a woman navigates a harsh world of sex, drugs, and crime.
Recovery from addiction can be a messy, complicated process, but that doesn’t begin to describe Domenica Delgado’s experience. After getting sick and tired of the vicious cycle of taking meth to get through her stints of prostitution and blowing her earnings on more of the drug, Domenica is finally coming up on six months sober. Unfortunately, someone with her history doesn’t have many options, especially bouncing between towns like American Falls, Idaho, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming. She’s moved on from sex work (mostly) and addiction, but when she finds herself in the Alpine Gentlemen’s Club and she’s offered the chance to dig far deeper into a life of crime than she’d ever considered, she has to question what staying “clean” really means to her. It turns out that crime does pay, but when Domenica finds out how deep that rabbit hole goes, it may be too late to get out. Gaudio’s prose is not for the faint of heart, as the story is textured with the visceral, physical sensations of injury, unpleasant sex, and hard drug use as well as nearly every bodily excretion at one time or another (“I kick the handle, flushing this disaster some overweight woman probably left just to make room for a Big Mac. Disgusted, I put the toilet seat down, sit on the lid, and…suture my wounds”). But those coarse, sometimes-foul descriptions define Domenica’s world, and there’s a powerful sense of truth behind them. Readers are forced to confront the fact that this sometimes-sickening view of everyday spaces and objects is no less genuine than the more sanitized versions they might be used to. But even more than the graphic details and language, Domenica herself shines. At first the portrait of an unlikable protagonist—rude, vulgar, acerbic, criminal—the novel ultimately presents a complex character study of a survivor, someone who takes seemingly desperate acts and situations in stride because she doesn’t second guess the things she does by necessity. This violent world is as quotidian to her as a desk job would be to others. Learning how she got to be the person she is now is an illuminating journey, buoyed by her acid tongue and the tale’s fast-moving action.
This portrayal of a diamond in the rough uses brutal reality to create deeply human empathy.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-978092-59-4
Page Count: 322
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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