This worthy tale delivers an epic feel and strong characters.
A novel follows a surgeon who possesses all the material comforts anyone could want, but harbors a deep lacking in his soul.
When readers first meet Hiram McDowell, he is leaving a hiking partner for dead and trying to make it back down a mountain in Nepal in 1981. It’s hard to judge if McDowell is simply callous and cruel or whether this is an issue of survival. Everything readers learn about him in the next few chapters, though, shows he is a pig who treats women like objects and deceives his third wife, Carole Mastriano. He’s also power-hungry, cheating a colleague, Michael O’Leary, out of a post on his way to becoming president of the International College of Surgeons. The one soft spot he has is for his three kids: Billie, who gets in trouble with one of Carole’s daughters; Ann, who copes with a turbulent marriage and mean children; and Sophie, who seeks to find her professional footing as a photographer. The tales start to converge when Paige Sterling, a journalist in her 50s fighting sexism at her network to keep her job, is assigned to cover McDowell’s story. Tragedy befalls the family when Ann’s son Jeremy goes on a killing spree, which leads to McDowell’s ultimate downfall when he is convicted of murdering the culprit in his hospital bed. McDowell escapes from prison and begins an unlikely association with a bookstore owner named Maud and her family. That gives him a chance at spiritual redemption while Sterling and the police try to hunt him down. Coles (Sister Carrie, 2016, etc.) has a knack for creating distinct characters. From McDowell to the members of Sterling’s crew in Nepal, they all have their own personalities. No player is wasted as a mere plot device. The author also expertly weaves together varied threads, though there are certain points where the story jumps forward past important action. But Billie revealing his indiscretions and his desire to be an artist; Sophie struggling to find herself after her partner is murdered; Ann navigating her marriage; and Sterling using unexpected opportunities all dovetail well with McDowell’s arc.
This worthy tale delivers an epic feel and strong characters.Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9961903-4-3
Page Count: 472
Publisher: Storyinliteraryfiction.com
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
A treat for fans of The Evil Dead or Zombieland, complete with affordable solutions for better living.
A hardy band of big-box retail employees must dig down for their personal courage when ghosts begin stalking them through home furnishings.
You have to give it up for the wave of paranormal novels that have plagued the last decade in literature; at least they’ve made writers up their games when it comes to finding new settings in which to plot their scary moments. That’s the case with this clever little horror story from longtime pop-culture journalist Hendrix (Satan Loves You, 2012, etc.). Set inside a disturbingly familiar Scandinavian furniture superstore in Cleveland called Orsk, the book starts as a Palahniuk-tinged satire about the things we own—the novel is even wrapped in the form of a retail catalog complete with product illustrations. Our main protagonist is Amy, an aimless 24-year-old retail clerk. She and an elderly co-worker, Ruth Anne, are recruited by their anal-retentive boss, Basil (a closet geek), to investigate a series of strange breakages by walking the showroom floor overnight. They quickly uncover two other co-workers, Matt and Trinity, who have stayed in the store to film a reality show called Ghost Bomb in hopes of catching a spirit on tape. It’s cute and quite funny in a Scooby Doo kind of way until they run across Carl, a homeless squatter who's just trying to catch a break. Following an impromptu séance, Carl is possessed by an evil spirit and cuts his own throat. It turns out the Orsk store was built on the remains of a brutal prison called the Cuyahoga Panopticon, and its former warden, Josiah Worth, has returned from the dead to start up operations again. It sounds like an absurd setting for a haunted-house novel, but Hendrix makes it work to the story’s advantage, turning the psychological manipulations and scripted experiences that are inherent to the retail experience into a sinister fight for survival.
Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59474-526-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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