Refreshingly original writing with a delightfully orchestrated twist.
In Story’s (Problems of Translation, 2015) second novel, several outsiders try to outrun their pasts.
In 1971, Clayton Poole is a 34-year-old journalist for the Rolling Hills Reporter newspaper in Montana. In the paper’s “morgue” of articles from other news outlets, he’s startled by a recent piece about a woman in Washington state who confesses to killing her estranged husband with a gun that a “mysterious stranger” gave to her. This discovery leads him to call an emergency meeting with his editor, but the exact reason for his excitement isn’t immediately revealed. In 1965, Rusty Thomas meets a waitress named Maddie in a diner at the limits of Southeast City, Washington. He presents her with a pair of nylons that he won in a radio contest. Their ensuing relationship is troubled by the specter of Maddy’s past. In 1952, Travis Mackey is a 15-year-old youth who lives with his father, the caretaker of a shutdown gypsum mine in the Coast Range in California. Ever since his mother’s untimely death, his dad has taken to beating him regularly. One day, on a deserted country road, he looks up and sees a condor, and he imagines it swooping down to sink its talons into the old man. Not long afterward, a stranger appears at the mine toting a gun. The narrative spans almost seven decades, beginning in 1952 and concluding in 2018, but author Story proves to be a master of the slow reveal, gradually pulling away the veil that shrouds a secret that’s central to the plot. He does so by sharing details of his characters only when readers truly need to know them, and not before. Regarding Rusty, Story writes laconically, “Though he lived close to the heart of the town, near the college, he was customarily drawn to peripheries.” Such revelations lead to further questions; for instance, is Rusty drawn to peripheries because he has something to hide? The novel’s epilogue is somewhat long-winded, unnecessarily tying up every loose end. Otherwise, though, this is a smartly conceived, beguiling tale that few readers will forget.
Refreshingly original writing with a delightfully orchestrated twist.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9862382-2-2
Page Count: 246
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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