A powerful epic of people and place, loss and love, reconciliation and redemption.
Debut author Scotton sets a captivating modern morality tale in Kentucky’s coal country, 1985.
With the small-town aura of To Kill a Mockingbird, a man reflects on the summer he learned that tradition, greed, class, race and sexual orientation can make for murder. Multiple stories are at play in the coal town of Medgar: Bubba Boyd, the boorish son of a coal baron, is raping the landscape; local opposition leader and popular hairstylist Paul Pierce’s homosexuality is used to attack his environmental position; and the narrator, Kevin, grieving the death of his younger brother, arrives at age 14 to stay with his widowed grandfather. With a mother trapped by depression and father subconsciously casting blame, Kevin’s left alone in grief’s pit, and it’s Pops, a wise and gentle veterinarian, who understands his pain and guilt. In Medgar, mines are played out, and Boyd’s Monongahela Energy digs coal by "mountaintop removal," pushing forested peaks into verdant valleys, leaving a poisoned landscape. Scotton’s descriptions of plundered peaks like Clinch Mountain, Indian Head and Sadler, Pops’ boyhood haunts, are gut-wrenching. As Kevin tags along on vet calls with Pops and befriends a local teen, Buzzy Fink—"fresh friends from completely different worlds faced with the hard shapings of truth and deceit"—Scotton explores both the proud, stoic hillbilly culture that accepts Paul’s "bachelor gentlemen" love and the hate-filled greed wielding the Bible as a weapon in service of ignorance and Mammon. And then Buzzy witnesses a brutal killing, a murder whose ramifications may cost Cleo, his brother, a prestigious college football scholarship. With glimpses of a mythical white stag and mad stones symbolic of the land’s capacity to heal, Pop, Buzzy and Kevin "tramp " to an isolated lake and find themselves targeted in a Deliverance-like shooting. Scotton offers literary observation—"a storm was filling the trees with bursting light"—and a thoughtful appreciation of Appalachia’s hard-used people and fragile landscape.
A powerful epic of people and place, loss and love, reconciliation and redemption.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-5192-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Center gives readers a sharp and witty exploration of love and forgiveness that is at once insightful, entertaining, and...
Saving lives is not just a job for Austin firefighter Cassie Hanwell; it’s core to who she is. But can she rescue herself from the emotional fortress she’s built and forgive those who have hurt her?
A decade ago, Cassie’s 16th birthday was a one-two punch of heartbreak. First, her mother abandoned her family. Hours later, a high school crush deeply violated her trust. Deciding that love is for the weak, Cassie replaced vulnerability with muscle mass and forged a career in emergency rescue. Ten years later, as the young firefighter is at the top of her game—accepted as one of the boys and receiving a service award—Cassie comes face to face with the high school boy who wreaked havoc on her life. In the first of many surprises in this tale of ever ratcheting stakes, Cassie loses her cool and sets off a series of events that land her at an old-school firehouse near Boston where she is the first woman to serve. Not only does Cassie face an unwelcoming crew, she begrudgingly moves in with her estranged mother, who is dealing with serious health issues and desperately wants to reconnect. Expertly crafting this page-turner, Center (How to Walk Away, 2018, etc.) creates a character you can’t help rooting for while constantly adding new tension to the story. Cassie learns that her job is on the line as the city budget has tightened. Perhaps the worst blow, though, is that she must compete with Owen “The Rookie” Callaghan, her only true friend, for a spot on the crew. Most vexing to the hardhearted Cassie is that The Rookie is nothing short of dreamy, with an easy smile and a washboard stomach. She promised herself long ago that she would never open her heart to romance—or forgive her mother. She's in for the fight of her life.
Center gives readers a sharp and witty exploration of love and forgiveness that is at once insightful, entertaining, and thoroughly addictive.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-04732-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
A dynamic start to a series with a refreshingly original premise.
After a horrible affair implodes her life, a young woman travels to North Carolina for an inheritance, meets a sexy firefighter and two half sisters she didn’t know she had, and decides it’s time for a life-changing move.
Avery Keller believed her mother’s claim that she didn’t know who Avery's father was. In truth, her father knew about her, which makes her feel unwanted and resentful when she finds out about it after he dies, despite the inheritance he leaves her. Traveling to Magnolia, North Carolina, to claim it, she meets her two half sisters, who also have tangled feelings toward their father. Her inheritance consists of some heavily mortgaged buildings in downtown Magnolia, so Avery stays in her sister Carrie’s apartment while the sisters decide how to handle the properties and Carrie cleans out her father’s mansion. The apartment’s landlord, Gray, is the sexy fireman she bickered with at a gas station on her way into town. Every day Avery lingers, she grows closer to Magnolia, her sisters, Gray, and his daughter, softening her determination to leave. She doesn’t have anywhere to go, anyway, since her successful life in San Francisco had been derailed by an affair with a deceitful married man. As her relationship with Gray grows emotionally and physically intimate, it threatens his narcissistic ex-wife just as he hopes to gain sole custody of his daughter. The first full-length novel (A Magnolia Reunion, 2019) in the Magnolia Sisters series introduces the daughters of a renowned artist whose star had faded, highlighting his complicated relationships with them and with his community. Major’s characters and small-town romance worldbuilding are unique, engaging, and emotionally compelling. Avery and Gray’s romance is complex, but the Magnolia backdrop adds dimension and texture to the story.
A dynamic start to a series with a refreshingly original premise.Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-488-05664-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harlequin HQN
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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