A poignant and compelling narrative of a boy’s search for connection and meaning.
A boy encounters hostility and hope in Tabb’s debut coming-of-age novel.
It’s 1990 when Jack Turner returns, after a long absence, to his coastal hometown of Denton, Florida, to attend a funeral. He reflects on pivotal events in the summer of 1968, just before he turned 13. As the younger son of two alcoholics, Jack was mostly resigned to the fact that his parents neglected him. When Jack and two friends found a starving dog, he decided to adopt him on the spot, calling him Bones. He convinced his dad to let him keep the pet, but there was a high price, as his dad demanded the boy pay him rent to do so. Jack’s determined efforts to care for Bones brought him into conflict with local boys, who beat Jack up after he undercut the going rate for cleaning fish for tourist anglers. Jack was befriended by troubled World War II veteran Hank Pittman, who lived in a broken-down school bus and offered him work fixing up the bus. Hank also urged eccentric local widow Mary Jane Dawson to hire Jack to do some yardwork. Soon, however, malevolent gossips wrongfully accused Hank of abusing the boy, which led to a suspenseful trial. Tabb, a former middle and high school English teacher, grew up in the Florida Panhandle, and his depiction of that landscape lends authenticity to the small-town setting. The shadow of war hovers in the background, both in Hank’s past and in the present of Jack’s older brother, who’s away in military training. At times, the novel pits its heroes against one-dimensional villains, but Jack’s voice feels authentic throughout. Although the character’s devotion to Bones propels the action, Tabb never allows the narrative to become a sentimental boy-loves-dog story. The scenes between Jack and his father are particularly effective in revealing the desperate nature of the protagonist’s family situation. The expressive prose shines brightest, however, when it focuses on Jack’s determination to live up to the trust that Hank and Mary have placed in him.
A poignant and compelling narrative of a boy’s search for connection and meaning.Pub Date: July 31, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72210-439-9
Page Count: 396
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PROFILES
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.
Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as told from the perspective of a more resourceful and contemplative Jim than the one you remember.
This isn’t the first novel to reimagine Twain’s 1885 masterpiece, but the audacious and prolific Everett dives into the very heart of Twain’s epochal odyssey, shifting the central viewpoint from that of the unschooled, often credulous, but basically good-hearted Huck to the more enigmatic and heroic Jim, the Black slave with whom the boy escapes via raft on the Mississippi River. As in the original, the threat of Jim’s being sold “down the river” and separated from his wife and daughter compels him to run away while figuring out what to do next. He's soon joined by Huck, who has faked his own death to get away from an abusive father, ramping up Jim’s panic. “Huck was supposedly murdered and I’d just run away,” Jim thinks. “Who did I think they would suspect of the heinous crime?” That Jim can, as he puts it, “[do] the math” on his predicament suggests how different Everett’s version is from Twain’s. First and foremost, there's the matter of the Black dialect Twain used to depict the speech of Jim and other Black characters—which, for many contemporary readers, hinders their enjoyment of his novel. In Everett’s telling, the dialect is a put-on, a manner of concealment, and a tactic for survival. “White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,” Jim explains. He also discloses that, in violation of custom and law, he learned to read the books in Judge Thatcher’s library, including Voltaire and John Locke, both of whom, in dreams and delirium, Jim finds himself debating about human rights and his own humanity. With and without Huck, Jim undergoes dangerous tribulations and hairbreadth escapes in an antebellum wilderness that’s much grimmer and bloodier than Twain’s. There’s also a revelation toward the end that, however stunning to devoted readers of the original, makes perfect sense.
One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780385550369
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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