A measured generational family saga about the passing of a way of life.
A family of fishermen struggles to evolve with the times in Johnston’s debut literary novel.
The Brennans of Worland, Minnesota, make their living in two ways. The first is commercial fishing on the Lake of the Woods, where for three generations they have caught walleye and sturgeon using pound nets. The second is mink farming—a complementary business, since a diet of fish is, as patriarch Arthur claims, “low cost and produces lustrous fur” in the minks. In 1960, Arthur’s 21-year-old son, Pete, returns home after his two-year stint in the Army, craving freedom and the open water. Arthur puts him to work on the family fishing boat, but on his very first day, Pete accidentally severs his leg with a cable. Pete fears his whole future has been snatched away from him (“In a matter of days, I’d gone from everything possible to nothing possible”), but his fortunes improve with the arrival of Julia, the lovely nurse who helps him adapt to life with a prosthetic. Pete eventually masters his balance enough to get back on the boat. Arthur’s older son, Wayne, a former hockey player and Air Force vet, has been given control of the mink farm, but his drinking is beginning to cause trouble. When new laws against pound nets threaten their livelihood, both Brennan businesses are at risk of capsizing. Into this climate steps the next generation of Brennans in the form of Pete and Julia’s son, Jay, who takes over as narrator from his father about halfway through the novel. When Jay suffers his own fishing boat accident, it seems the family’s fate might finally be sealed.
One gets the sense from Johnston’s plainspoken prose that he intimately knows the setting and the occupations he writes about. Here, Pete shows his sister, Mary, an artist whose marriage to the town’s rival business clan causes interfamily tensions, how to kill a mink: “I shoved the animal headfirst into the shoebox-sized device and held its tail with my right hand. Inside, the animal’s skull was under a steel plate attached to a twelve-inch handle that stuck out the top…A metallic crack bounced off the top of the shed. The animal stopped moving.” The plot’s procession through the decades allows it to nod toward various social changes of the later 20th century (the animal rights movement comes for the mink farm), but in some ways the sweeping time frame works against the book’s dramatic potential—the story ends up being less about the conflicts between its characters than the unsparing passage of time, which comes for all industries and those who work them. When, near the end of the book, a would-be customer asks Pete if he knows where he can get any walleye, Pete replies, with blunt resignation, “I’m the last commercial fisherman on Lake of the Woods and the last walleye fisherman in the United States.” To Johnston’s credit, by the time this line arrives, the reader understands the weight those words carry.
A measured generational family saga about the passing of a way of life.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781962834353
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Calumet Editions
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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