An original, compelling hybrid of period novel, murder mystery and bildungsroman.
Hula’s debut novel portrays the fear, violence and small acts of grace in a small coal-mining town during early union-busting efforts.
In 1931 Moss Creek, a coal-mining town where men as young as 14 are expected to “go under ground or leave,” young Johnny Marko witnesses the torture of a miner by company thugs and fears for his father’s safety. With best friend Andy Strovos—an adventurous Huckleberry Finn to Johnny’s cerebral Tom Sawyer—he observes adults’ behavior, although he’s not yet old enough to understand the brutality and desperation shadowing his idyllic childhood. When Johnny’s father dies in a suspicious mining accident, the boy suspects Ray Kruger, the company’s “bitter” and “shameless” supervisor, to be the man responsible. Given a chance to avenge his father’s death, young Johnny chooses, as his father taught him, to do the right thing and avoid violence. But the memories haunt him, and many years—and a world war—later, Johnny returns to his “older, dirtier and more decayed” hometown, under an assumed name, to finish the “game” Ray began. With the help of Andy and the love of a local girl, Anna Alberston, Johnny soon discovers that the limited time he and his father spent together was more valuable than the lifetimes most fathers and sons get. Hula’s tale is long on misery and short on humor, but it transcends its melancholy through honest observation and rich, evocative details of a bygone era: freshly baked bread, homemade root beer, storage cellars, spittoons. The author handles each scene with a delicate hand, establishing just the right atmosphere with steady brush strokes of detail. Along the way, he introduces a caravan of characters, including Danny, an 8-year-old boy who reminds Johnny of himself as a child, who instinctually makes the best of his decrepit environment. The most memorable character, Maggie—a thoroughly modern cashier at the company store—serves as the “town’s central news agency” and a selfless matchmaker. Because of her kindness, Johnny’s odyssey ends with love, justice and peace.
An original, compelling hybrid of period novel, murder mystery and bildungsroman.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 261
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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