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FOREBEAR

An entertaining, discerning take on the connections between the Old and New West.

Awards & Accolades

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A mixed martial arts fighter draws on the spirit of his mountain-man ancestor during a precarious Western journey in this debut novel.

Brendan “Bear” Glass is an MMA combatant whose raw power has won him some fame. In his latest match, he is beaten to a pulp by his opponent and ends up in a bloody pile on the floor. He is astonished to learn that his manager had given him rat poison in order to make the bout gorier. Badly injured, he won’t fight again, so he connects with his nephew, Branch. Brendan plans to build an enormous marijuana-growing facility under the guise of a luxury gym and resort in Montucky—backwoods Montana. The goal will be to transport the weed from California to the new site without getting stopped by the police. Two hundred years earlier, Hugh Glass, Brendan’s ancestor, an old mountain man, takes the same journey, though for Hugh it is just after the Lewis and Clark expedition. Hugh is a former sailor, plunderer, and survivor of a notable bear attack. He’s killing time as a fur trapper, waiting six years before he and his partner go back to retrieve some treasure they hid after stealing it from a French pirate. In the present day, Brendan is gripped by a sudden pain and detours to an abandoned sweat lodge, the same one that Hugh recovered in after the bear attack. There, Brendan makes a mystical connection to his ancestor that may help him with his uncertain future. Gaddis’ novel unleashes a flurry of Western sights and sounds that stretch from St. Louis to Mendocino, California, in two wildly different centuries. The old times, inside Mandan Indian villages and Colonial forts, are described in forthright, heedful language, while the contemporary story holds on to similar circumspection (“Now it’s an arid collection of collapsed lean-tos, yurts, willow benders and dilapidated canned ham trailers amid weed-ridden garden plots with fallen fences”). Amid the book’s brisk plot, the exploration of the roots of Western families is impressive, depicting the players as cunning self-starters in a diverse world of opportunity and peril. While Brendan’s dreams of a hydroponics empire aren’t quite as alluring as the tale of Hugh and the bear, they are similarly scrupulous and analogous in spirit.

An entertaining, discerning take on the connections between the Old and New West.

Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-9981646-1-8

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Shitaree Publishing

Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017

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THE VEGETARIAN

An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.

In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.

Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.

An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.

Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Hogarth

Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015

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CATCH-22

Catch-22 is also concerned with some of war's horrors and atrocities, and it is at times painfully grim.

Catch-22 is an unusual, wildly inventive comic novel about World War II, and its publishers are planning considerable publicity for it.

Set on the tiny island of Pianosa in the Mediterranean Sea, the novel is devoted to a long series of impossible, illogical adventures engaged in by the members of the 256th bombing squadron, an unlikely combat group whose fanatical commander, Colonel Cathcart, keeps increasing the men's quota of missions until they reach the ridiculous figure of 80. The book's central character is Captain Yossarian, the squadron's lead bombardier, who is surrounded at all times by the ironic and incomprehensible and who directs all his energies towards evading his odd role in the war. His companions are an even more peculiar lot: Lieutenant Scheisskopf, who loved to win parades; Major Major Major, the victim of a life-long series of practical jokes, beginning with his name; the mess officer, Milo Minderbinder, who built a food syndicate into an international cartel; and Major de Coverley whose mission in life was to rent apartments for the officers and enlisted men during their rest leaves. Eventually, after Cathcart has exterminated nearly all of Yossarian's buddies through the suicidal missions, Yossarian decides to desert — and he succeeds.

Catch-22 is also concerned with some of war's horrors and atrocities, and it is at times painfully grim.

Pub Date: Oct. 10, 1961

ISBN: 0684833395

Page Count: 468

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1961

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