Equal parts haunting and humorous; literally a warts-and-all gunslinger story.
In this debut novel, two killers find themselves on a collision course in the last days of the Wild West—but the march of progress will not halt supernatural forces from intervening in their conflict.
In 1912, the American frontier has been declared settled and the culture of the Wild West is in decline. One of its last bastions is Widow Tree, a town whose overweight and wealthy leaders buck the comforts of electricity and the railroad in order to attract tourists to the brothels and casinos of an ever disappearing Old West. Matt Hargreaves is a rich, heavy-drinking wastrel who was appointed a deputy of Widow Tree only because his father was the marshal. When a shootout in Canada ends with the death of a 12-year-old girl, Matt dives deeper into his excesses and is unknowingly targeted by Cpl. Justin Augustus, an omniscient, mystical force in the form of a revenge-seeking, uniformed Mountie. Meanwhile, while working a prison-transport job, the baby-faced psychopath Jody Simms finds Widow Tree and the surrounding area prime ground for indulging his lowest instincts, including rape, focusing on the frontier’s newest resident, Rachel Adler. Rachel is a complicated figure, posh, educated, and looking to carve out some part of the American West she has experienced in books for herself. Yet she, too, is haunted by portents of a demon—Simms—out to get her. Lunde’s novel is a down-and-dirty Western, opening with a penis boil and featuring plenty of viscera and corpses, the rampant and unvarnished racism of the period, and the brilliant, scatological ugliness one would expect from game-heavy diets and no indoor plumbing. Characters are venal and crass, more John Falstaff than John Wayne, and the tale uses this to great effect, sometimes disgusting readers with Simms’ sick actions or entertaining them with a closed-window farting contest between Matt and his father. Though principally a Western, the story’s fantastical flourishes are reminiscent of the early Gothic novel, with inexplicable darkness, visions of an ethereal world, haunted Mounties with dire warnings, and a singing phallus. While these facets all have big impacts on the plot, they are rarely explained to the audience. This will likely cause consternation in some readers, but it largely adds to the book’s eerie sense of adventure and mystery.
Equal parts haunting and humorous; literally a warts-and-all gunslinger story.Pub Date: July 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-949135-05-3
Page Count: 616
Publisher: Untreed Reads Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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