bookshelf

THE LAST RED CENT

Name: THE LAST RED CENT
Author: David Fetter
ISBN: 978-0-9997326-0-1

by David Fetter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 2018

An intriguing but flawed debut Western.

bookshelf

A Pinkerton detective doggedly pursues an old enemy in Fetter’s debut historical novella.

In 1882, a train is hauling a massive shipment of bank notes and gold from San Francisco to Tucson, Arizona. Someone tips off the outlaw Barksdale Gang, who intercept the delivery. But they didn’t anticipate running into Pinkerton agent Henry Wheeler, who’s traveling undercover as a mild-mannered Bible salesman. Wheeler, a Confederate Civil War veteran, served in the same unit as the gang’s leader, Kirby Barksdale, and his little brother, Danny; together, they raided Union supply trains until Kirby’s betrayal resulted in Wheeler’s injury and capture. The war is long over now, but for Wheeler, old wounds haven’t healed, and he aims to bring Kirby to justice. However, things don’t go as planned, and a bloody clash results in the deaths of gang members and railroad employees. Kirby escapes with most of the cash, while Wheeler locks Danny up in a Tucson jail, overseen by a morally dubious deputy. Wheeler makes plans to intercept Kirby and recover the funds, and Danny’s incarceration becomes complicated when a clever saloon worker gets involved in an attempt to free him. The book concludes with an unrelated short story, set decades later, about a grifter trying to steal an isolated prospector’s hidden gold. Fetter’s readable style evocatively captures the story’s hardscrabble, desolate environment. Even the most loathsome characters retain some shred of humanity, as exemplified by cruel Kirby’s genuine love for his brother. However, there are some moments of awkward prose (“The young outlaw averted the salesman’s gaze”), and the book’s tendency toward lengthy exposition robs some potentially powerful moments of their impact, giving the brief narrative a disjointed and compressed quality. Characters with a notable Western twang to their speech get the best dialogue; the more buttoned-up characters come off as less realistic.

An intriguing but flawed debut Western.

Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-9997326-0-1

Page Count: 184

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: June 8, 2018

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

bookshelf

Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

bookshelf

Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.