A moving pair of historical tales, as philosophically astute as they are dramatically gripping.
Two novellas poignantly examine characters who find comfort in their roots and find themselves drawn to the unknown.
Hess offers a pair of searching explorations of the push and pull of one’s origins. In The Root of Everything, set in the early 20th century, Richard leaves his native Germany over the objections of his father in order to follow his younger brother, Rolf, to the United States. They both find work at a lumberyard in Missouri, but when Rolf dies tragically on the job, Richard is devastated. Nevertheless, he starts his own business and a family, as well; his son, Cal, follows in his footsteps and runs a lumbering business and marries a woman named Josie. However, Cal is never quite happy with his life, and Josie is so miserable that she finally leaves him; their son, Stanford, who’s secretly gay, leaves for New York City to become a wealthy businessman; there, he has a relationship with a palm reader named Sam. In deeply affecting prose that’s characteristic of the entire book, Hess depicts Richard’s despair over his now scattered family: “Richard…covered his face, and with this sharp action, the dragon flies scattered as if this human grief had poisoned their air.” In the second novella, Lightning, Bud is born and raised in Fayetteville, Arkansas, but dreams of moving out west with his best friend, Jerky. After his father dies, a rich aunt offers him the opportunity to move to New York and ride horses, a passion of his, and it’s a possibility that is as tantalizing as it is frightening. Once again, the author’s writing is poetically subtle but impressively restrained; readers are drawn deep into these stories without any excessive hand-holding, free to draw their own conclusions. With impressive emotional power, both novellas show the paradoxical ways in which one’s family can feel like a prison from which to break free but also like a home in which one can find one’s true self.
A moving pair of historical tales, as philosophically astute as they are dramatically gripping.Pub Date: July 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-60-864158-1
Page Count: 204
Publisher: rEBEL SaTOri PrESS
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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