bookshelf

QUINNY

Name: QUINNY
Author: Matthew D. Hutcheson
ISBN: 978-1-72716-051-2

THE ASTONISHING STORY OF A FATHER'S LOVE FOR HIS SON

by Matthew D. Hutcheson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 14, 2019

A rough but affecting account of an Apache’s love for his son.

bookshelf

A debut true crime book tells the story of a sudden murder that changes the lives of a Native American father and son.

“Native American Apache legends pass down from father-to-son across centuries,” Hutcheson begins ominously. “Of all those teachings, traditions, and legends, the ‘Legend of the Woman’ is the one they fear the most. Her presence means someone is about to die.” According to the author, there was a beautiful Apache woman sitting in the back seat of the truck as Frank “Wakado” Banashley and his son, Quinten, drove around the vicinity of Hawley Lake in Whiteriver, Arizona, on Dec. 8, 1999. Wakado—who had recently started drinking again after 16 years and whose marriage to Quinny’s mother was quickly falling apart—didn’t want his son to steal snacks from the local convenience store when they find it empty with its door ajar, but he didn’t stop the 17-year-old from doing so. A little while later, they were pulled over by Apache Reservation Police Department Officer Tenny Gatewood, a friend of Wakado’s from boyhood. Despite their friendship, over the course of the interaction both Wakado and Tenny were shot—the latter fatally. For this, Wakado was sentenced to 42 years for second-degree murder. It was inside the prison that he met Hutcheson, a fellow inmate, and decided to tell him what happened that fateful day as well as in the years before and after. It is the stirring story of a man who would do anything for his family, especially his son. The author’s prose tells the tale from Wakado’s perspective, summoning the man’s emotional trauma with stark images: “Deep in Wakado’s soul, those wounds remained suppressed for two decades, and the time had come for them to be free. The small emotional moment with” a faithful friend “caused a seismic event in Wakado that allowed his secret to ooze to the surface like hot magma.” Hutcheson does his best to give the story an intriguing shape, jumping back and forth through time and ending chapters with cliffhangers. Even so, the book reads like it was written by a friend of Wakado’s in terms of its sympathies.

A rough but affecting account of an Apache’s love for his son.

Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-72716-051-2

Page Count: 167

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: March 13, 2019

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

bookshelf

ETERNAL RUSSIA

YELTSIN, GORBACHEV AND THE MIRAGE OF DEMOCRACY

by Jonathan Steele ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1994

bookshelf

An informed and gloomy appraisal of the prospects for democracy in Russia from the longtime Moscow corespondent of the (Manchester) Guardian, who concludes that the present political system may be one of the many revolutions from above in Russian history that end in failure. Steele (Andropov in Power, 1983, etc.) derives his conclusion both from Russian history and from his own experiences as a correspondent. He makes the telling observation that, when Yeltsin stood on a tank to proclaim his resistance to the attempted coup in 1991, the crowd that applauded him was fewer than 200 in number; only when the coup was safely over did huge crowds emerge. The coup failed, Steele says, not because of mass resistance but because the plotters lost their nerve and the Army commanders split. Nor is he impressed by the ability of Russians to run a democratic system. Yeltsin's contempt for the Supreme Soviet—the majority of which originally supported him—was such that he refused for almost a year to appear before it or to meet with its leaders. He believes that Yeltsin deliberately provoked the hard-line faction in the Parliament into an injudicious response, which gave him an excuse to use the Army. Yeltsin also manipulated the constitutional referendum held at the same time as the election in 1993 to prevent opposition to its approval and to increase his own power. Steele's conclusions are not entirely pessimistic: He believes that considerable freedom has already been established and that the gains that have been made cannot be entirely reversed. Overall, however, he sees Russia as a ``society without law'' and he questions whether the country will not take ``a long time to evolve towards genuine democracy, if ever.'' Steele is better on contemporary events than on history, and better on politics than on society at large, but his deep knowledge of Russia over the last three decades gives his conclusions great and worrisome authority.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-674-26837-7

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Harvard Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION | WORLD | HISTORY

bookshelf

WITCHES AND JESUITS

SHAKESPEARE'S MACBETH

by Garry Wills ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1994

bookshelf

The much celebrated master of nonfiction works his magic on Macbeth, using the ingredients of a mere monograph to conjure a vision of politics, theology, and theatrical practice in King James's England. Wills, winner of a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Critics Circle Award for Lincoln at Gettysburg (1992), argues that Shakespeare's Macbeth should be understood in the context of the contemporaneous Gunpowder Plot of 1605. This attempt to blow up England's king and Parliament gripped the British imagination then much as the Red Menace and the assassinations of the 1960s dominated postwar American consciousness. Wills frames his examination of Macbeth with such parallels. The heart of his book, which grew out of lectures given at the New York Public Library, shows how the play bristles with the ideology prevalent in the Plot's aftermath, when King James and his spokesmen condemned the Jesuit-led rebellion using metaphors of witchcraft. Wills juxtaposes close readings of the play's language, imagery, and stage history with details of the Plot's representation in propaganda and popular culture. Shakespeare's famous witches take center stage as Wills shows how they draw the regicide Macbeth into their circle. Explicating Shakespeare's demonization of verbal ``equivocation,'' purported to be the Jesuitical method for dissembling in an unfriendly realm, Wills forges a new understanding of the play's second half. He justifies its attentions to the witch Hecate and to the Scottish prince Malcolm as crucial to Shakespeare's exploration of rituals of truth in demonology and kingship. Envisioning Macbeth as an integrated rhetorical presentation of a theological politics, Wills hopes, will enable us to once again find theatrical power in the whole play—especially given the neat conjunction of England's 160506 crisis with our contemporary obsessions about plots and princes. Wills's latest essay portends a renewed Macbeth for the theater; his critical performance, meanwhile, manifests the power of literary criticism that is simultaneously scholarly and popular.