A captivating tale about a Civil War veteran’s search for Crazy Horse.
In this historical novel, a legendary soldier and wealthy rancher gets drawn back into the fray, recruited to help end a terrible war with Native Americans.
Josey Angel’s reputation precedes him all over the country. He is known as a Union soldier who fought in the Civil War and later battled Native Americans, earning him the moniker the “Angel of Death.” But now he goes by the name Josef Angliewicz and tries to put all that violence behind him—he’s a successful rancher in Montana with a wife, Annabelle, and a daughter, Isabelle. Still, old habits prove hard to break when he’s recruited by the Army to track down fearsome Native American Chief Crazy Horse, who is blamed for the grisly slaughter of Whites and is considered an obstacle to a peace treaty with Indian nations. Josey, in response to the economic incentives promised and out of an incurable restlessness, accepts the mission and heads out in search of Crazy Horse. But Josey is both hunter and prey—Atticus Grieve holds him responsible for the death of his father and son, who were killed fighting Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s forces when they marched through Georgia. Overwhelmed by grief, Atticus only finds consolation in the anticipation of Josey’s murder. Catron deftly captures the anarchic spirit that reigned in the immediate wake of the Civil War, when order strained, often tyrannically, to impose itself. In addition, he provides a sensitive portrayal of the plight of the Native Americans, capable of extraordinary cruelty but also brutalized themselves by Whites, who often saw them as subhuman. The author’s prose is the novel’s principal weakness—Catron displays a tendency to reach for melodramatic heights in the canned language of old cinematic Westerns. He seems anxious that readers won’t fully appreciate the depth of Josey’s tough-guy credentials and so repeatedly announces them to fatiguing effect. Consider this exchange between a woman inquiring about Josey and a store clerk: “ ‘There are only two kinds of people who go looking for Josey Angel. Them that need his help are the first.’ ‘And the other?’ ‘Them that want to die.’ ” Still, this is too dramatically gripping and historically intriguing a tale to be sunk by the author’s prose style.
A captivating tale about a Civil War veteran’s search for Crazy Horse.Pub Date: April 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4328-8856-5
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Five Star
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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