A short story collection that’s by turns wry, heartwarming, and richly dramatic.
Schulz’s debut fiction anthology contains 26 short stories of varying formats and lengths, each anchored on the common framework of a small, Western farming community called Havelock, an unpretentious place far from the big cities. Between stories, Schulz intersperses tongue-in-cheek snippets from the town’s various announcements and advertisements, like one for the Havelock Mortuary: “We are the only mortuary in town. So it’s either us or behind the barn.” The stories range widely in both tone and scope; some are very short, little more than bits of dialogue with stage directions, while others, although usually still quite short, are far more complex and ambitious, such as the collection’s most gripping piece, “Terror in the Heartland,” which opens with a trio of strangers driving onto the isolated farm of an old couple who’s been there 20 years. The visitors trigger the husband’s suspicions, and when the men return armed and obviously intent on murder, they get the story’s well-executed surprise: The seemingly mild-mannered old farmer is a retired special agent more than capable of defending himself and his wife. “The AK-47 is a dependable and an easy weapon to use,” he muses. “I had many friends who were killed with this weapon.” Equally detailed but entirely different in tone is “Gone Fishing,” in which a workaholic bank employee in North Dakota goes on a road trip to go fishing, though he suddenly finds himself back in the 1950s, able to visit his parents’ farm as a young man and get a second chance at living his life. This note of nostalgia runs through most of the stories—a strong evocation of simpler times full of common sense and daily kindness. Lost and lonely people in dire straits (“Mary started the winter without any supplies or coal, and a dead husband”) are saved again and again by the simple kindness of others; in one bleak story, hope is brought by none other than Santa Claus.
A touching, effective collection that will keep its smiling readers guessing.
Pub Date: May 14, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 125
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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