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SOMEONE ELSE

While not always surprising, this ’60s family tale remains strikingly memorable.

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A debut literary novel focuses on an American teenager’s journey of self-discovery.

It is 1968 in East Lansing, Michigan, and Sally Tallman is a high school student with an odd hobby. Sally likes to inhabit the lives of other people. She will mimic her chosen target to a refined point, even telling strangers that she has someone else’s name. Sally’s peculiar passion helps her distance herself from the realities of her home life. Her father is a World War II veteran whose career as a journalist has been put on hold thanks to a vague illness. Her mother is deeply immersed in the creation of homemade clothing, paintings, and any other crafty pursuit that catches her fancy. Then there is Sally. She may be a steadfast babysitter and a whiz at Latin, but who is she really? Readers learn more about Sally as she copes with events like the suicide of a classmate and the emergence of family secrets. The Tallmans also allow a troubled girl named Beth to live with them. Beth brings her own difficulties to the table, not the least of which involve one of Sally’s neighbors, a religious man who runs a church out of his house. While it may take readers a few pages to adjust to Sally and her ambition to be other people, Hunter’s text paints an intricately detailed picture. With the Detroit Tigers in the World Series and intriguing characters, like a girl who is described as little more than “human wallpaper,” Sally’s world is an entertainingly distinct one. But some aspects can be drawn out. Sally’s long obsession with an accomplished twirler named Barbie Robert comes with the takeaway that perhaps this successful teen’s life isn’t as perfect as it seems. Although the novel ultimately delivers an obvious conclusion, the heroine’s odyssey is unforgettable, enlivened by Fanta, Jet Star 88s, and a close look at a not so distant time.

While not always surprising, this ’60s family tale remains strikingly memorable.

Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-950730-30-8

Page Count: 292

Publisher: Unsolicited Press

Review Posted Online: April 13, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020

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THE WOMEN

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

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A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.

When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024

ISBN: 9781250178633

Page Count: 480

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023

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THE GOD OF THE WOODS

"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.

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Many years after her older brother, Bear, went missing, Barbara Van Laar vanishes from the same sleepaway camp he did, leading to dark, bitter truths about her wealthy family.

One morning in 1975 at Camp Emerson—an Adirondacks summer camp owned by her family—it's discovered that 13-year-old Barbara isn't in her bed. A problem case whose unhappily married parents disdain her goth appearance and "stormy" temperament, Barbara is secretly known by one bunkmate to have slipped out every night after bedtime. But no one has a clue where's she permanently disappeared to, firing speculation that she was taken by a local serial killer known as Slitter. As Jacob Sluiter, he was convicted of 11 murders in the 1960s and recently broke out of prison. He's the one, people say, who should have been prosecuted for Bear's abduction, not a gardener who was framed. Leave it to the young and unproven assistant investigator, Judy Luptack, to press forward in uncovering the truth, unswayed by her bullying father and male colleagues who question whether women are "cut out for this work." An unsavory group portrait of the Van Laars emerges in which the children's father cruelly abuses their submissive mother, who is so traumatized by the loss of Bear—and the possible role she played in it—that she has no love left for her daughter. Picking up on the themes of families in search of themselves she explored in Long Bright River (2020), Moore draws sympathy to characters who have been subjected to spousal, parental, psychological, and physical abuse. As rich in background detail and secondary mysteries as it is, this ever-expansive, intricate, emotionally engaging novel never seems overplotted. Every piece falls skillfully into place and every character, major and minor, leaves an imprint.

"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.

Pub Date: July 2, 2024

ISBN: 9780593418918

Page Count: 496

Publisher: Riverhead

Review Posted Online: April 13, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024

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