A thought-provoking novel that asks probing questions about human connection.
In Putegnat’s (Laguna, 2006) novel, a history professor and his cohorts investigate the remains of a soldier found in a German forest.
Tom Campbell leads a self-involved life as a tenured associate professor at tiny Graffton College in Huntsville, Texas: “To his few friends, he was quiet and insular, to his students, easily annoyed and annoying, to the college administration, arrogant and insubordinate. And to all three, he seemed to want to be somewhere else and ever unhappy about it.” But his ordered existence begins to crumble after the death of his father, Charles Campbell, whom he rarely visited despite the fact that he lived only an hour away. Tom has little interest in the contents of his dad’s old house, but Elly Asher, his on-again, off-again girlfriend, retrieves some old ledgers from it. Inside are handwritten passages that Tom initially thinks are the ramblings of a senile mind, but Elly discovers that they’re actually the coded story of Charles’ life. The elder Campbell had always told Tom that he spent World War II stateside as a supply officer in the Army. It turns out that his military history ties into a case involving the decades-old remains of a soldier in Germany. Soon, Tom, Elly, and U.S. Army Warrant Officer Bob Vardis, who’s officially investigating those remains, join forces to find out who Charles really was. Putegnat creates a small group of admirable but flawed characters: Tom is shown to be a poor boy who never recovered from his unpleasant experience as an Ivy League student; Elly is portrayed as having once escaped an abusive boyfriend; and Bob is depicted as a stellar soldier who let his own son drift away. Then there’s the late Charles, whose ledger reveals the many secrets he’d kept, even from his own son. With deliberate pacing, the author unspools the stories of how the characters all came to be where they are in the present, yet he keeps the central mystery alive right up until the satisfying twist ending. Throughout, he emphasizes the future possibilities in his characters’ lives, not just the missed opportunities.
A thought-provoking novel that asks probing questions about human connection.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2017
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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