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Purging Purgatory

Name: Purging Purgatory
Author: Roger Mendoza
ISBN: 978-1-938962-19-6

A GHOST STORY

by Roger Mendoza ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

Taut tale of people battling ghosts — those from a haunted past as well as the phantom kind.

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Mendoza, Roger

PURGING PURGATORY: A GHOST STORY In Mendoza’s (The E.B. Roberts Chronicles, 2016, etc.) thriller, a Texas family capable of interacting with lost souls is tormented by something much darker. Eight-year-old Tommy Danvers’ good friend, Thomas, is a ghost, but the boy’s ability to see spirits isn’t unique to his lineage. Grandmother Dorothy was once a medium to the rich and famous before giving it up, after the tragedy of losing her husband, who died trying to kill someone else, and her son to suicide. She still helps souls in Purgatory when they ask but doesn’t want the family trait for daughter Catherine (Tommy’s mom), whom Dorothy had institutionalized and whose ghost-seeing is stifled by anti-hallucinogenic drugs. Dorothy’s likewise afraid that Tommy is too young to distinguish a Purgatory soul from a demon. When the boy’s estranged and terminal billionaire father, Gregory Prescott, wants to see his son, Catherine and Tommy drive to Austin but find evil awaiting them. The two manage to escape, only to end up in an accident, putting Catherine in a facility for mandatory therapy, on account of the apparently addictive drug she’s taking and the drinks she’d had before driving with Tommy. The evil, however, may have followed her home, where the Danverses will have to face a darkness bent on their collective demise. Mendoza’s muted ghost story has a few spooky turns but primarily centers on the family’s tortured history. Catherine, for starters, has a good reason to despise the priest that Dorothy trusts, and the deaths of the Danvers father and son are an essential element to the plot, especially as details gradually come to light. The supernatural parts are certainly absorbing, like teasing Tommy’s power, which becomes abundantly clear during the inevitable and riveting confrontation. An impressive pace keeps the book moving, even during Catherine’s therapy sessions, thanks to short paragraphs (a few sentences or less) and brief chapters. Sparse particulars regarding Tommy often work — he recognizes evil simply as shadows or black smoke. But Tommy’s suggestion that he knows when most people will die is a rather daunting concept unfortunately left unexplored.

Taut tale of people battling ghosts — those from a haunted past as well as the phantom kind.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: 978-1-938962-19-6

Page Count: -

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2016

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).

Pub Date: July 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-345-45071-X

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.