An impressive launch of what has the potential to be an exemplary tale about a runaway.
A debut offers the beginning of a novel in serial form, following a teenage girl fleeing her abusive home in 1980s Louisiana.
A missing poster boasts $10,000, presumably a reward for information to help find 18-year-old Missi Piessy. But the young lady with a “puppy face” carrying a high school gym bag calls herself Bridget. Coming from Boottown, Baton Rouge, a week before Christmas in 1983, Bridget rides the trolley in New Orleans, getting off at 2nd Chance Clothing. Owner Hilma Burtte can see the reticent girl is hiding something—or possibly running away, her temple sporting a pronounced bruise. Bridget, careful not to say too much to Hilma or her daughter Clair Wildes, buys a wool coat and turns down the owner’s offer of money or a part-time job. Bridget later splurges on a catfish po’ boy but eventually makes her way to a homeless shelter. There, she meets volunteer Marvin, who may have sinister motives, trying to convince Bridget the shelter won’t take her right away and suggesting she stay at his place. The novel’s first volume ends with a short but ominous flashback to the day before. As her drunk mother sleeps, Bridget packs her bag with essentials, including a switchblade, preparing for an uncertain future. The author sets the story’s tone immediately, opening with the photo of a girl in pigtails. Details, of course, are sparse, but it’s evident that Bridget’s escaping her mother, at one point recalling Mom screaming for her glass. Bridget, too, is savvy, not readily fooled by Marvin, even suspecting he’s recited his spiel to other girls. Despite the volume’s relatively short length, Honest manages nuance, providing a back story for Hilma, who decades ago worked at a brothel, the Cherry. Dialogue is the phonetic rendering of the New Orleans dialect Yat; readers may have to read a few lines aloud, but it’s perfectly clear, for example, what “Dank ya” is. At the same time, the narrative’s prose is often foreboding, like Madam Selma White aiming a pistol at a belligerent client: “Her eyes focused on his entirety, wary of sudden movements while her index waited by the trigger.”
An impressive launch of what has the potential to be an exemplary tale about a runaway.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 16
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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