A forgotten piece of Americana brought to vivid life.
A horse tells the story of the Overland Westerners’ ride around the United States in this YA historical novel.
Pinto, the equine narrator of this book, has handsome black-and-white coloring and a noble heritage as a Morab (half Arabian, half Morgan). He calls himself “a little horse with big dreams,” and that makes him perfect for accompanying his new owner, George Beck, on his fame-and-fortune scheme. The idea is that Beck and three other men—calling themselves the Overland Westerners—will leave Bainbridge Island in Washington in 1912 for a 20,000-mile trip, the longest horseback ride in history. They plan to visit every state capitol in the continental U.S., taking photographs of themselves with each governor. Along the way, they’ll sell calendars, postcards, and magazine subscriptions to help fund the journey and wind up in California for the 1915 World’s Fair, the Panama-Pacific Exposition. Like many other ambitious stunts, this one runs into severe difficulties: bad weather, arduous trails, and a constant money shortage, especially as the Westerners get farther east. Their promotional items and magazines don’t sell, and many governors refuse photo opportunities. The Westerners finish the odyssey, but there’s no gold at the end of their rainbow, and it’s hard on the animals; it can be upsetting to see them suffer. Happily, though, Pinto ends his days on Bainbridge, “a good life for a horse.” Historical information and photographs are included. In her book, Evans (The Stone of Wisdom, 2018, etc.) deftly brings out the pluck of the Westerners and the variety and verve of America in the early 20th century. At one stop, for example, the Westerners have no success because a stunt stilt-walker has already been through “and pinched every penny out of the people.” Pinto’s lively, appealingly egotistical voice is appropriate to this young, ambitious America: “I am quite aware of how spectacular I am.” But while they are brave, the Westerners’ vainglorious enterprise is hard to applaud because it mainly resulted in poverty for the men and exhaustion, injury, or worse for the horses.
A forgotten piece of Americana brought to vivid life.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 274
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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