A zippy, engrossing, and offbeat work of historical fiction.
The dynamic adventures of a folkloric outlaw.
The legend of this book’s resilient Cherokee protagonist, uniquely named Zesty Sundrops (after his mother’s favorite salsa), springs forth from the opening pages. In late 1941, Zesty drives two recently released convicts to a remote area, where his younger brother and partner in crime, Hoot, shoots them dead with a shotgun. The Sundrops brothers are mob-commissioned contract killers, but they’re increasingly reluctant ones. They’re eager to change their lives by establishing a wholesale truffle business, which they think will bring them happiness. That plan is derailed when Zesty, desperate for excitement, joins the U.S. Army to fight in World War II. Prolific author John Zodrow (Tracking Bobby, 2016, etc.), writing pseudonymously as Mark, demonstrates a definite knack for consistent action, which won’t fail to keep readers on their toes. Zesty’s exhilarating military tour of duty fighting Nazis and Italian forces in Europe, for instance, showcases the character’s bravado, determination, cunning, and valor. He’s captured by the enemy, but he manages to escape what seems to be certain doom. Later, world-renowned writer Ernest Hemingway pens a manuscript about Zesty’s early life; that narrative, along with a multiact stage play about Zesty (written by “Henry Hall”), splices the story into thirds, and each section is satisfying and immensely entertaining. Some elements feel particularly realistic, as when Zesty meets and romances the love of his life, Gwen Sutton, and when Zesty seeks vengeance against the Native American gang that murdered his parents. Although Zesty and Hoot seem nearly inseparable at its beginning, the novel is very much dominated by Zesty’s adventures; at one point, he even assassinates Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and undergoes a court martial for war crimes. In true Zesty style, he emerges from jail more than a decade later to continue his gun-toting shenanigans.
A zippy, engrossing, and offbeat work of historical fiction.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68433-104-8
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This large, stately, and intensely powerful new novel by the author of Terms of Endearment and The Last Picture Show is constructed around a cattle drive—an epic journey from dry, hard-drinking south Texas, where a band of retired Texas Rangers has been living idly, to the last outpost and the last days of the old, unsettled West in rough Montana. The time is the 1880s. The characters are larger than life and shimmer: Captain Woodrow Call, who leads the drive, is the American type of an unrelentingly righteous man whose values are puritanical and pioneering and whose orders, which his men inevitably follow, lead, toward the end, to their deaths; talkative Gus McCrae, Call's best friend, learned, lenient, almost magically skilled in a crisis, who is one of those who dies; Newt, the unacknowledged 17-year-old son of Captain Call's one period of self-indulgence and the inheritor of what will become a new and kinder West; and whores, drivers, misplaced sheriffs and scattered settlers, all of whom are drawn sharply, engagingly, movingly. As the rag-tag band drives the cattle 3,000 miles northward, only Call fails to learn that his quest to conquer more new territories in the West is futile—it's a quest that perishes as men are killed by natural menaces that soon will be tamed and by half-starved renegades who soon will die at the hands of those less heroic than themselves. McMurtry shows that it is a quest misplaced in history, in a landscape that is bare of buffalo but still mythic; and it is only one of McMurtry's major accomplishments that he does it without forfeiting a grain of the characters' sympathetic power or of the book's considerable suspense. This is a masterly novel. It will appeal to all lovers of fiction of the first order.
Pub Date: June 1, 1985
ISBN: 068487122X
Page Count: 872
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1985
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
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