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ASH FALLS

Name: ASH FALLS
Author: Warren Read
ISBN: 978-1-63246-047-9

by Warren Read ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2017

A moody, haunting foray into rural Americana in the mold of Daniel Woodrell and Christian Kiefer.

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A man’s past haunts the citizens of an isolated, rural Pacific Northwest town.

Ernie Luntz has been serving time in Walla Walla for murder and is now being transported by car to a medium security prison when the driver has a heart attack and the car crashes. Ernie escapes and heads for his hometown, Ash Falls. Read (The Lyncher in Me, 2008) meticulously weaves the gritty, hard-knock lives of many men and women from this impoverished, rural town in mountainous Washington into “tight little complicated knots.” It’s October, a “time of mud and muck and creeping molds,” of “gloom and regret.” A series of chapters, each titled after a different character (or sometimes two) and told in the third person with frequent flashbacks, are our signposts. Ernie’s wife, Bobbie, is a part-time nurse at the high school their son, Patrick, attends. He works at Tin Dorsay’s mink farm after school. He’s gay and likes Mama T’s son, Shadow. Hank Kelleher, who’s pushing 60, used to teach at the high school and now sells pot for medicinal purposes to neighbors. He and Bobbie might have had an affair. His sister, Lyla, is married to Jonas Henry. Their son, Eugene, Hank’s nephew, is married to Marcelle. The young couple lives in Eugene’s parents’ basement. Marcelle works as a housekeeper at the Sleep Inn run by Melvin White. Eugene works at Benny’s garage. Chapter by chapter we come to know these people, their struggles and fears. We learn that four years earlier Ricky Cordero said “something,” maybe directed at Patrick. Bobbie “couldn’t tell what.” Ernie, a Vietnam War vet who suffered from “demons” and had a “hair trigger temper,” beat Ricky to death. In this small town that “can’t keep its mouth shut,” word of Ernie’s escape looms like a threatening thundercloud over the forests and rivers.

A moody, haunting foray into rural Americana in the mold of Daniel Woodrell and Christian Kiefer.

Pub Date: July 1, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-63246-047-9

Page Count: 306

Publisher: Ig Publishing

Review Posted Online: April 17, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017

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.