A sharp, surprisingly affecting debut.
A cobbled-together family of money launderers is in big trouble after their newly hired runner disappears with $250,000.
The Brooklyn-based operation is headed by seasoned schemer Shecky Keenan. It includes two orphans: Henry Vek, 21, whom "Uncle Shecky" took in at age 9 after the boy's boozing mother (Shecky's cousin) died in a car crash, and Kerasha Brown, 23, the daughter of another of Shecky's ill-fated cousins. A brilliant thief and break-in artist, Kerasha recently joined the household after having served six years in prison. Though all the members of this makeshift family are "mixed race, Henry and Shecky look white, and Kerasha, black." When the runner, Emil, a talented artist friend of Henry's, goes missing, Shecky must answer to the intimidating client whose money was lost. Meanwhile, Kerasha, who like her late mother is drawn to heroin, becomes obsessed with a contentious, court-appointed psychologist with the power to send her back into custody. Written in a jumpy, time-hopping, and sometimes hallucinatory style, this first novel is loaded with damaged characters. Shecky is haunted by the rape and murder of his sister and a squalid upbringing by three vicious uncles. Zera, a cop on the trail of human traffickers, was herself bought and sold as an orphan child in her native Montenegro. A seasoned legal investigator, Selfon has firsthand knowledge of laundering schemes and the people who devise them. More importantly, he is attuned to questions of identity and belonging. Not all of the characters click, and the book contains more narrative noise than it needs, but the poetry-loving, sharply reflective Kerasha alone makes the book worth reading. She deserves a sequel all her own.
A sharp, surprisingly affecting debut.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-22201-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
Tense, claustrophobic, and a bit hard to swallow.
When a girl frozen in ice at the Arctic Circle thaws out alive, an ancient Nordic languages specialist with troubles of her own is called to the scene.
Ferencik—author of Into the Jungle (2019)—specializes in thrillers set in wilderness environments with female protagonists; her latest takes us to the land of subzero temperatures and wind-whipped polar landscapes. But bad weather is just the beginning of the unpleasantness Val Chesterfield encounters when she overcomes her many phobias to fly out and help climate scientist Wyatt Speeks with his perplexing specimen. The girl he chopped out of the wall of a crevasse and defrosted is terrified, violent, and unintelligible. While Wyatt is creepy on many levels, creepiest of all is his unwillingness to discuss the death by exposure of his erstwhile lab partner, Val's twin brother, Andy. Andy's having gotten locked out of the house overnight in his underwear has been presented as a suicide, but neither Val nor her father, also a climate scientist, believe it. Belief is a problem all through this book—the elements made up to serve the plot rest on a foundation of real climate science, linguistics, and cultural history but still don't manage to be convincing. The five characters—Val, Wyatt, a nasty cook, and a pair of married marine scientists—are also less than lifelike. Saddled with mental health issues and bad manners, their interactions range from rude to abusive except for the married couple, who are so in love it's nauseating. You really wouldn't want to be stuck in a room with these people, which poor Val is much of the time, and now someone has stolen her anxiety meds and hidden the booze! She finds herself becoming deeply attached to the mystery girl, but progress with communication is slow, and the girl's health takes a drastic turn for the worse. And then they all go outside and things get crazy.
Tense, claustrophobic, and a bit hard to swallow.Pub Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-9821-4302-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
An atmospheric turn through a real-life 19th-century scandal.
A charitable residence for women in 19th-century Minnesota is at the center of a murderous mystery.
The Bethany Home for Unwed Mothers offers the women who reside there a chance to begin their lives anew. When its newest resident arrives with a dirty gown on her body and vivid bruises on her neck, it causes a stir, but not a shock. The woman, who is silent even when asked her name, is christened Faith Johnson and asked few other questions. Soon, though, the home, which prides itself on the transformational impact it has on the women who live and work there, is rocked by rumors concerning the mysterious Faith. Abby Mendenhall, board treasurer for the Sisterhood of Bethany, asks Faith’s roommate, May, to investigate the suspicious circumstances of her arrival. While Faith and May grow closer, the other “inmates” keep their distance from the pair. Faith is accused of being a Mesmerist, capable of convincing others to do her bidding, and Abby thinks the death and disappearances plaguing local brothels might be traced to Bethany Home’s newest charge; in the newspapers, a swirl of accusations mounts against the residence’s practices. As the journalists circle closer, Abby’s decisions increasingly straddle the line between doing the right thing and seeming to. In the backroom of one of the local brothels, a former tenant asks her, “What did you expect me to do, anyway? Go work as a seamstress? They’re paid three dollars a week now, Mrs. Mendenhall. A month’s bed and board can be as much as twenty. How’s a girl to live?” “How’s a girl to live?” is this book’s central question. Faith, May, and their peers are scrabbling for a livable future among a few meager offerings: marriage, poverty, or brothel. Each woman must consider how to do the right thing, how to create a good life, and what those ideas, once examined, truly mean. The trust that ebbs and flows among the characters is this novel’s strength; the supposed suspense at its center feels muted and dry by comparison.
An atmospheric turn through a real-life 19th-century scandal.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9780385550161
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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