An engaging novel about one man’s road trip to the heart of darkness: himself.
In Smith’s debut novel, a reformed hippie hits the road one final time in a quest to find his runaway son, and along the way, he finds himself.
Jerry knew he’d hit rock bottom when he drove his Cadillac into San Francisco Bay 10 years before. A lifetime of booze and drugs had finally taken its toll. Although he’s now clean and helping others who have gone down some of life’s darker paths, Jerry is haunted by the fact that his son, Ethan, ran away. Ethan and his mom aren’t the only people Jerry has lost, however; in a very real sense, he’s also lost himself. Plagued by a selective amnesia after his plunge into the bay, he doesn’t even remember his own name, but he’s committed to righting his life’s wrongs. His first step is to track down Ethan, against the advice of his friend, sobriety mentor and dharmic guide Mahatma (“You no ready,” he says). Along the way, Jerry befriends uptight Talia and her daughter, Lily, a runaway like Ethan. Lily is committed to living on the road with her boyfriend, Max, a wannabe messianic figure who dreams of escaping the strictures of society (and the law) in the Canadian Rockies, but she begrudgingly allows her mother to follow their latter-day hippie caravan, so long as Talia travels with Jerry. It’s an imperfect but beneficial arrangement: Talia can keep an eye on her daughter, while all three of them search for Ethan. Although the novel’s stakes are high, this is a quiet read, deeply focused on the inner journey of its protagonist. Smith does a commendable job drawing on California’s quixotic beauty to limn the subtle shifts in Jerry’s struggle with sobriety and grief (“Jerry sat on the grassy knoll, watching the crab fishers stringing nets out on the pier. A thin sheet of clouds swept past the bridge, blurring the crisp lines of the cables”). Likewise, as Jerry’s fragmented memory begins to coalesce around one horrifying realization, Smith’s controlled prose keeps the tension tight. It’s Talia that gets to sum up the novel’s thesis, though, when she confronts Jerry at his lowest point: “This trip,” she says, “if it’s about anything it’s about not running away.”
An engaging novel about one man’s road trip to the heart of darkness: himself.Pub Date: May 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9859495-2-5
Page Count: 366
Publisher: Blue West Books
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A short, simple, and sweet tale about two friends and a horse.
A novel tells the story of two spirited girls who set out to save a lame foal in 1952.
Mary, age 12, lacks muscle control of her legs and must use a wheelchair. Her life is constantly interrupted by trips with her widower father to assorted doctors, all of whom have failed to help her. Mary tolerates the treatments, hoping to one day walk unassisted, but her true passion involves horses. Possessing a library filled with horse books, she loves watching and drawing the animals at a neighboring farm. She longs to own one herself. But her father, overprotective due to her disability and his own lingering grief over Mary’s dead mother, makes her keep her distance. Mary befriends Laura, the emotionally neglected daughter of the wealthy neighboring farm owners, and the two share secret buggy rides. Both girls are attracted to Illusion, a beautiful red bay filly on the farm. Mary learns that Illusion is to be put down by a veterinarian because of a lame leg. Horrified, she decides to talk to the barn manager about the horse (“Isn’t it okay for her to live even if she’s not perfect? I think she deserves a chance”). Soon, Mary and Laura attempt to raise money to save Illusion. At the same time, Mary begins to gain control of her legs thanks to water therapy and secret therapeutic riding with Laura. There is indeed a great deal of poignancy in a story of a girl with a disability fighting to defend the intrinsic value of a lame animal. But this book, the first installment of the Dream Horse Adventure Series, would be twice as touching if Mary interacted with Illusion more. In the tale’s opening, she watches the foal from afar, but she actually spends very little time with the filly she tries so hard to protect. This turns out to be a strange development given the degree to which the narrative relies on her devotion. Count (Selah’s Sweet Dream, 2015) draws Mary and Laura in broad but believable strokes, defined mainly by their unrelenting pluckiness in the face of adversity. While the work tackles disability, death, and grief, Mary’s and Laura’s environments are so idyllic and their optimism and perseverance so remarkable that the story retains an aura of uncomplicated gentleness throughout.
A short, simple, and sweet tale about two friends and a horse.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Hastings Creations Group
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.
Keridan’s poetry testifies to the pain of love and loss—and to the possibility of healing in the aftermath.
The literary critic Geoffrey Hartman once wrote that literature—and poetry, in particular—can help us “read the wound” of trauma. That is, it can allow one to express and explain one’s deepest hurts when everyday language fails. Keridan appears to have a similar understanding of poetry. She writes in “Foreword,” the opening work of her debut collection, that “pain frequently uses words as an escape route / (oh, how I know).” Many words—and a great deal of pain—escape in this volume, but the result is healing: “the ending is happy / the beginning was horrific / so let’s start there.” The book, then, tracks the process of recovery in the wake of suffering, and often, this suffering is brought on by romantic relationships gone wrong. An early untitled poem opens, “I die a little / taking pieces of me to feed the fire / that keeps him warm / you don’t notice that it’s a slow death / when you’re disappearing little by little.” The author’s imagery here—of the self fueling the dying fire of love—is simultaneously subtle and wrenching. But the poem’s message, amplified elsewhere in the book, is clear: We go wrong if we destructively give ourselves over to others, and healing comes only when we turn our energies back to our own good. Later poems, therefore, reveal that self-definition often equals strength. The process is painful but salutary; when “you’re left unprotected / surrounded by chaos with nothing you / can depend on / except yourself / and that’s when you gather the pieces / of the life you lost / and use them to build the life you want.” The “life you want” is an elusive goal, and the author knows that the path to self-definition is fraught with peril—but her collection may give strength to those who walk it.
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72770-538-6
Page Count: 196
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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