A haunting story told with quiet, emotional power.
A rugged woodsman from the Adirondacks is drawn into the dangerous world of bootlegging in Shaw’s debut novel set in the 1920s.
François Germaine grows up in Lake Aurora in New York state’s Adirondack Mountains, a densely forested area with which he has an intimate familiarity. He abandons engineering school at nearby Clarkson University in Potsdam in 1914, despite having real talent in that area; instead, he joins the U.S. Army, establishing himself as a war hero as he fights in Mexico and France. However, he returns to his hometown a sullen, quick-tempered man who’s inclined to drink to terrible excess. He finds work with an electric company constructing power lines throughout the region and soon stumbles into an opportunity to become a bootlegger, partnering with his best friend, Alonzo “Lonnie” Monroe, to transport illicit booze smuggled in from Canada during the Prohibition years for Legs Diamond, a relatively minor New York City gangster. However, the lucrative side gig turns increasingly dangerous as the pair go from being couriers to “bootlegger’s henchmen.” When someone murders a member of a rival New York outfit, the notoriously brutal gangster Dutch Schultz blames Diamond, and a gang war erupts that threatens to bury François and Lonnie. Throughout, Shaw depicts the two friends as aging relics in a vanishing world, and he poignantly describes their connection to their home: “They learned the ground by hearing it described over and over, even while in the womb, so when they got to a place for the first time, invited along to help and do chores at age ten or twelve, they already knew where they were and how it related to the whole.”
The novel is split into two parts; in the first, Lonnie tells the tale of his misadventures with François to local amateur historian Abel St. Martin, and the second delves into the private journal of Rosalyn Orloff, a brilliant woman who studied with philosopher William James while at Radcliffe College and was friends with Gertrude Stein. Rosalyn also crosses paths with François, and her account of him serves as a kind of ballast to Lonnie’s, as his credibility is suspect: “He’s always trafficked in howlers, lies and tall tales, hackneyed old homilies about the side-hill winder, the snow snake, the hide-behind,” according to St. Martin.Shaw’s poetic, elegiac style is affectingly melancholic and the story deftly raises provocative questions about the extent to which one can see clearly into a “still-murky past.” François is a memorably well-drawn character—hardened by a violent life but still achingly vulnerable. And Lonnie, in his 80s when he relates his story, is a moving embodiment of heartbreak. In a way, though, the Adirondacks itself are the true center of the novel, and François and Lonnie preemptively mourn its death even as they contribute to it: “The big woods are gone,” Lonnie says at one point, adding, “I’m gonna be dead myself soon enough, and I want them dams making power before I go.”
A haunting story told with quiet, emotional power.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-977233-35-6
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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