by Anthony J. Viola ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 9, 2022
Eco-fiction whose environmentalist message is somewhat stronger than its storytelling.
Viola’s novel examines the effect of environmental issues on communities and interpersonal relationships.
West York, Kentucky, is a financially struggling town, near the Illinois and Indiana borders, that was the site of a deadly underground coal mine collapse in 1994. Afterward, the mineral rights were sold to a strip-mining company that contaminated the air and groundwater, leading to a local cancer surge. In 2014, Ecological Resources, an energy company, comes to town to exploit the New Albany Shale Basin, which covers “perhaps one of the largest gas reserves known to science.” They offer lucrative jobs on a large, odorous, disruptive fracking project on the banks of the Ohio River. Lionel Boone, the only miner to survive the mine collapse, also lost his wife due to the effects of strip mining, and he becomes concerned about history repeating itself. He contacts Earth First!, a radical eco-defense group, hoping that they can find out what’s going on with the project. Thirty-one-year-old Eris Carroll, an Earth First! volunteer who dropped out of the University of North Carolina, travels to West York, and over the course of three months, she helps Boone and other concerned townspeople understand the fracking process and raise resistance. They come up against the mayor, the sheriff, and others who see fracking as key to the economic revival of the area. Although Eris’ time in West York is cut short due to family concerns, the friendship that develops between her and Boone helps them to reconnect with others. Another storyline follows lifelong West York resident Cass Estill Taylor, whose trauma propels her into action beyond civil disobedience. Small-town intrigue and gossip propels a good deal of the action of the story. The book includes extensive, informative descriptions and explanations of fracking (“Engineers used tons of water, sand, and chemicals to force ‘fluid’ through miles of piping to fracture what were once impenetrable shale basins that impeded access to large pockets of natural gas”). While the novel also importantly spends time addressing the political sway that Big Energy has over the interests of individual people, all this exposition has the effect of somewhat overshadowing the interpersonal relationships at the novel’s center.
Eco-fiction whose environmentalist message is somewhat stronger than its storytelling.Pub Date: June 9, 2022
ISBN: 9781684339600
Page Count: 223
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2004
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
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