Category Archives: Literary Fiction

Review: The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope by Rhonda Riley

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  • Paperback: 432 pages
  • Publisher: Ecco (April 23, 2013)
  • ISBN-10: 0062099442
  • Source: Publisher

Seventeen-year-old Evelyn Roe has been given the duty of managing her aunt’s family farm in rural North Carolina. WWII is raging and the family needs to use all resources available to keep up the family horse farm. She discovers what appears to be a badly burned soldier, Evelyn quickly brings the unidentifiable stranger into her home. Its appearance is quiet odd, the gender unidentifiable. What shocks Evelyn the most is the individual’s rapid healing rate and the strange vocalizations it emits. Within a few days, the stranger transforms into a tall red-haired woman, so similar to Evelyn’s own appearance that they can pass as twins. Evelyn is quick to come up with a story to explain the woman’s unexpected arrival.

The days pass and Evelyn and the woman, now named Addie, form a strong and unique relationship. The relationship becomes sexual despite Evelyn’s strong heterosexuality. She craves a conventional life with a husband and children, so Addie grants her this wish. After disappearing for a few days Addie returns, yet not in her original form. She has taken upon the appearance of a man, whom Evelyn refers to as Adam. In this new form, Evelyn and Adam are able to have a “conventional” relationship and eventually wed, bearing five gorgeous children. The close-knit small town has no inkling of Adam’s “uniqueness” until tragedy strikes their idyllic farm town life.  This tragedy forever changes Adam and he loses a bit of the magic he once carried.

As the years pass, Evelyn and Adam’s relationship shifts, largely due to Adam’s “gifts.” Evelyn knew that her life with Adam and the daughters they raised would be far from typical, but as they get older the vastness of Adam’s differences takes a toll on their nontraditional relationship. Adam, too, understands and evaluates these differences and takes their future in his own hands.

The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope has got to be one of the most unique novels I have ever read. It is marketed as an “unconventional and passionately romantic love story” along the lines of The Time Traveler’s Wife and I must say it truly lives up to these claims. I’m not one that typically reads love stories but the extreme uniqueness of Adam and Evelyn’s relationship drew me in.

Riley has created a truly unconventional novel that is so eloquently written that it becomes easy for the reader to dispel belief about an extremely unlikely situation. It is an incredibly moving and captivating story that I could not put down for days. The author highlights the magic in everyday life while teetering on the border of the supernatural.

As I read this novel, I kept pausing and contemplating just I could possibly review this book. No matter how I describe it, I feel I’m minimizing the tremendous beauty the author has gifted the reader.  Following is just a sampling of the author’s prose:

Grief is a powerful river in flood. It cannot be argued or reasoned or wrestled down to an insignificant trickle. You must let it take you where it is going. When it pulls you under, all you can do is keep your eyes open for rocks and fallen trees, try not to panic, and stay faceup so you will know where the sky is. You will need that information later. Eventually its waters calm and you will be on a shore far from where you began, raw and sore, but clean and as close to whole as you will ever be again.

I admit to being quite perplexed through the first hundred pages. The author does demand a lot of trust from the reader, requiring one to suspend reality and see past to the beauty and magic of this book. Once one achieves this test, a truly unforgettable and captivating story will be revealed. Highly, highly recommended.

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Review: The Burn Palace by Stephen Dobyns

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  • Hardcover: 480 pages
  • Publisher: Blue Rider Press; First Edition edition (February 7, 2013)
  • ISBN-10: 0399160876
  • Source: Publisher

Brewster, Rhode Island is your average small town. The majority of the residents were born there and will likely die there, their roots to the tight-knit community are strong. In a matter of a few days, however, numerous inexplicable events take place, starting with the “abduction” of a newborn baby right from it’s bassinet in the hospital. Replacing the newly born infant is a snake. This marks the beginning of a host of horrific activities, ranging from a scalping of an insurance investigator to an attack by a pack of unnaturally fearless coyotes.

The local police, including Detective Woody Potter, are stunned into action. Is it possible that all of these attacks are connected? The strange events started after two young girls were drugged and raped during some sort of Satanic ritual in the woods. One of these young victims was the mother of the missing baby, strangely not concerned after her child’s disappearance, likening it to the demonic child in Rosemary’s Baby.

Something decidedly supernatural is at hand, forcing the small community to reexamine one another in a completely new light. From a young boy somehow caught up in the events to his mentally unstable and incredibly violent stepfather, Dobyns creates a truly remarkable set of characters, all revealed within the first several pages. By the end of the novel, these characters are found to be connected, leaving the quiet town of Brewster forever changed.

It is hard to classify this novel into just one genre, instead it is a wonderful blend of literary fiction, crime fiction, and horror. What makes this novel stand out is that it isn’t simply a story of one small town’s demise at the hands of the supernatural, but instead a truly remarkable character study of the dark side of human nature.  To do so, Dobyns slows down the pacing to what could have been a much shorter book, instead replacing it with extensive detail and examination of each of the characters. Other reviews state the pacing was too slow, the detail too expansive, but to me this truly aided in the brilliance of this novel.

Typically, I’m not one to be won over by blurbs but when my idol, Stephen King, the master of horror, blurbs a book I listen. The power of this blurb is increased when I see that it’s not just your typical one line blurb but instead a page-long rave detailing his love and respect for this novel.

I’ve written some “secrets of a small New England town” books, and in The Burn Palace, it’s as if Stephen Dobyns is saying–very gently–”Hey Steve…this is how you really do it.

 

Typically, if I find myself reading the same book for more than a few days I get antsy. In the case of my reading of The Burn Palace, I savored it for three days, truly relishing in Dobyns’ incredibly skilled writing and his genuinely unique characters. Highly, highly recommended.

 

 

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Review: The Tell by Hester Kaplan

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  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Harper Perennial; Original edition (January 8, 2013)
  • ISBN-10: 0062184024
  • Source: Publisher
Mira and Owen live in Providence, Rhode Island, in Mira’s family home. Surrounded by her past, unable to get rid of any remnants of her deceased parents, causes a strain on her relationship with Owen. While on the surface they may appear wealthy they are, in fact, struggling financially. Enter the wealthy, debonair Wilton Deere, an former popular television actor. He’s purchased the home next door to Mira and Wilton in the hopes that his estranged daughter Anya, attending school in the area, will move in with him.

Wilton still lives in the limelight of his acting career. He has no real family, no close confidant to rely upon. What he does have is money and a great deal of it. Soon after meeting Mira & Owen he begins showering them with luxurious gifts of wine and food, new packages showing up on his doorstep each day. Owen isn’t ignorant and sees that Wilton is using his wealth to win them over. On the other hand, Mira is reluctant, yet unable, to turn down the money Wilton provides to restore her failing art gallery. She begins to feel indebted to him, spending more time with him than Owen. With reason, Owen is suspicious. His marriage to Mira, already quite vulnerable, weakens as she begins to lie to him about her actions and whereabouts. Owen eventually learns that it’s not an affair he should worry about, but a cruel relationship built on addiction and co-dependence. The money Wilton showers upon Mira is an attempt to win her over as he has been unable to do with his own daughter. He’s not interested in Mira romantically but a surrogate for the daughter he pushed away all those years ago.

The characters Kaplan creates in The Tell each have a resounding trauma in their past that prevents them from having a stable relationship. For Mira, it is the guilt that she somehow caused the death of her parents; Owen feels inadequate after not doing more to save the life of his then-girl friend from a gun-wielding mugger; Wilton is unable to forgive himself for the suicide attempt that nearly ended the life of not only himself, but his young daughter as well. Through this jumbled, damaged mess together and you get the dysfunctional relationship shared by these three individuals. Each of them were near the brink of eruption but the relationship that commenced upon Wilton’s arrival turned up the intensity and truly pushed each of the characters over the edge. Yet what was truly remarkable was how all of this was so expertly portrayed, only through the eyes of Owen himself.

As I was reading, I nearly forgot that my view of what transpired was limited to what Owen witnessed or experienced himself. I was immediately transfixed by the dynamic of this incredibly incredibly caustic relationship that followed. After I read the last several pages, I couldn’t help but wonder just how jaded Owen’s recollections were, if at all. Understandably, his feelings about Wilton and Mira’s friendship were strong, almost frightening at times. While I found this book to be incredibly absorbing, I feel readers might have appreciated a glimpse of what was going on from the perspective of the other two characters as well. I felt a great deal of sympathy for what Owen was experiencing, yet felt nothing but anger and bitterness toward Mira and Wilton. Would my feelings changed had I been able to see what transpired through their eyes?

How the triangle of a relationship eventually unravels is a bit disappointing, somewhat rushed, in my opinion. It is almost as though two big action scenes were developed but not much in between. That said, the culmination of all of the other redeeming qualities of this novel, including the dynamic characters, the gorgeous writing and stunning New England setting make up for what is lacking. Ultimately, The Tell is a tremendously well-written examination of marriage, of love, of family, and the dynamics of trust and forgiveness. Recommended.

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Review: The Devil in Silver by Victor Lavalle

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  • Hardcover: 432 pages
  • Publisher: Spiegel & Grau (August 21, 2012)
  • ISBN-10: 1400069866
  • Source: Publisher

Pepper is the newest guest in a mental institution, New Hyde Hospital, in Queens, NY. He isn’t mentally ill, instead the police decided to admit him to the hospital to spare themselves from a mountain of paperwork that would be required had they arrested him. Since he was a threat to the authorities, he’s admitted for a mandatory 72-hour stay.  Pepper receives a tour of the facilities from Dorry, a schizophrenic woman in her eighties who has been in the ward for decades. She knows all it’s secrets, specifically a wing that she warns Pepper must avoid at all costs.

The first night, Pepper is visited by a devilish creature with the head of a bison and the body of an old man. His life is spared when his room is entered by hospital staff and Pepper is given a cocktail of sedatives to calm him. When he awakens, days later, his experience is confirmed by other patients. A devil roams the halls of the hospital at night. Pepper teams up with three other patients in an attempt to rid the hospital of this horrid creature: Dorry, Coffee (a man with severe OCD who has been trying to warn the outside world of the dangers that reside in the hospital) and Loochie, a bi-polar teenage girl.  Their attempts are thwarted by the pill-pushing hotel staff.  Not helping their efforts are the meds they are forced to take: incredibly strong, mind-altering sedatives.  When the identity of the “Devil” is confirmed, Pepper begins to wonder if they monster can be, or should be, killed.

At the surface, The Devil in Silver resembles your typical horror novel. In actuality, it’s not a horror novel in the least bit. Instead, it is a character study of three of the patients, an exploration into their own personal devils and demons.  The transition from horror to a more standard set of fiction takes place midway through the book, a change that may throw off readers expecting something different. That said, this transition into an almost completely different piece of fiction is what makes this book stand apart, in this reader’s opinion. Lavalle explores a whole host of issues, satire and critique surrounding mental health institutions in our country. The reader will sympathize with the fate that has been dealt to these individuals who represent mentally ill patients as a whole. Additionally, the author attacks other key social issues head-on, including race relations, the current economic status of our country, and more.

So, for those of you interested in this book purely because it is labeled as a horror (as I was!) you may be disappointed. As an avid fan of horror, I was instantly drawn into the premise of the book: a monster roaming the halls of a mental institution. I wouldn’t say I was disappointed when the plot shifted, but I was certainly taken off guard. After turning the last page, I thought about this novel for nearly a week, trying to grasp and understand my thoughts after reading it. Ultimately, I was pleasantly surprised. A student of psychology and sociology, I commend Lavalle for this truly unique and wholly rewarding exploration of our society.

Bottom line: if you are looking for a standard horror novel, full of monsters and gore, keep walking. If you are looking for a completely rewarding character study of the human condition, of our society, pick up this novel. You will read it with eyebrows raised, questions looming in the back of you mind but hopefully, when the last page is turned, you will have the same experience I did.  Highly recommended.

 

 

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Review: The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison

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  • Hardcover:288 pages
  • Publisher:Algonquin Books (August 28, 2012)
  • ISBN-10: 1616200391
  • Source: Publisher

At thirty-nine, Benjamin Benjamin has nothing. He lost his wife and his children after a horrible tragedy. Desperate for a job, he enrolls in a night class called The Fundamentals of Caregiving. In addition to the medical aspect of caregiving, the course taught him how to maintain professionalism by keeping a physical and emotional barrier up when working with a client.

After Ben is assigned to his first client, a nineteen year old boy named Trevor suffering from Duchenne muscular dystrophy, he quickly learns that his night course did little to prepare him to deal with the emotions faced by a client with such an illness. Eventually, Ben and Trev form a relationship that quickly crosses the boundaries of what would be acceptable, a close friendship. Together, Ben and Trev embark upon a cross-country van trip to visit Trev’s incapacitated father. Along the way they stop by several “must-see” local attractions. After meeting a few wayward individuals, their journey becomes quite the interesting adventure, including a birth and a several hundred mile pursuit by a Buick Skylark.

Ultimately, however, the trek across the country was more than just a physical journey, but a mental and emotional one for all characters involved. Seeing that he had a purpose in life, that his existence was meaningful, Ben learned to forgive himself for the accident that took his children from him. Trev experiences a sort of rebirth after forming a meaningful and rewarding relationship.  Additionally, the idea that his father, the man that left him and his mother after Trev’s illness got too difficult, was now too incapacitated truly healed the relationship between this father and son.

What truly makes this novel remarkable is the role vehicles have with Ben, one of the central characters. It was a vehicle that completely ruined his life and, years later, it is a vehicle that provides him the mechanism and opportunity to heal.

Evison has created a truly enriching novel filled to the brim with incredibly flawed, emotionally damaged characters. He uses flashbacks to reveal Ben’s history, but the act that truly altered his life isn’t revealed near the end of the novel. The timing of this added an intensity to the novel that compelled the reader to continue on. It wasn’t until Ben was mentally prepared to deal with the tragedy that it was revealed to readers.

What could have potentially been a truly down and depressing novel is instead a humorous, uplifting story filled with rich and quirky characters. Highly recommended.

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Review: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

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  • Hardcover: 336 pages
  • Publisher: Random House (July 24, 2012)
  • ISBN-10: 0812993292
  • Source: Publisher

Harold Fry is recently retired, living with his wife Maureen in a small English village. Their marriage, on the surface, is no longer one made of love but more of convenience and habit. They no longer share a bedroom and Harold appears to annoy Maureen incessantly. One morning, among the routine mail, Harold receives a letter from a woman he hasn’t spoken with in two decades: Queenie Hennessy.  He once worked alongside Queenie but he hadn’t really thought of her since, until receiving this letter. She’s in a hospice, suffering from incurable cancer.

Harold writes Queenie a short, curt response and is on his way to mail the letter when he meets a young girl who unwittingly gives him a wake-up call, convincing him that he can do something to save Queenie. He begins walking, at first from one post box to the next, but soon his journey becomes more of a mission.  Harold is certain that if he walks to Queenie, who is clear across England (six hundred miles away!), he’ll be able to save her. He doesn’t alert Maureen until that evening during a brief phone call. Maureen, doubting Harold’s ability to walk any sort of distance, fails to believe her husband can make the trip.  She’s certain he will call, asking to be picked up. How could he make a walk of this distance, wearing “regular” clothes and boat shoes?

Harold keeps walking, disproving all of Maureen’s assumptions. He calls her each evening, apprising her of his progress. It isn’t long before Maureen realizes Harold is set on making this trek and she begins to question if he will return. She begins to miss him, soon moving her possessions back into the room they once shared, sleeping in their marital bed.

Meanwhile, along his journey Harold begins to meet people on his journey with stories that encourage him to continue on his mission. Each of these individuals unlock a passion or a memory that Harold has forgotten all this time. As he walks, Harold evaluates his life and the decisions he’s made. He reflects on the mother who abandoned him, his harsh father. He thinks of the day he met Maureen, lost chances with his son David, who he hasn’t seen in some time. He soon mails his credit cards back to his wife, learning to live on the meager side, carrying as little as possible. He reflects on nature as he walks and it isn’t long before he is able to identify the flowers and foliage that he passes on his journey.

As he walks, he sends postcards to Queenie, begging her to hold on until he arrives. Harold hints at an act of goodwill that Queenie performed, the reason he must continue his journey. Weeks pass and he finally phones the hospice where she is residing and learns Queenie has taken a remarkable turn, once weak in bed, now sharing the postcards he sends her with hospice care workers.

It isn’t long before the media and, in turn, the public learn of Harold’s journey. His passion and dedication rub off on and influence others. Some choose to join him in his journey, attracted by this sense of accomplishment.

Meanwhile, Maureen learns a great deal herself as Harold is on his journey. Spending time with a neighbor who recently lost his wife, Maureen begins to look at the positive aspects and memories of their marriage rather than only focusing on the negatives and faults.

Ultimately, it’s not Harold’s destination but the journey itself that is the most rewarding about this novel. Harold is an incredibly flawed yet endearing character. Joining him on his journey was an incredibly insightful and positive experience. It isn’t until the ending, when Harold is so close to his destination, that Harold confesses the source of his guilt, his sadness, his need for redemption.

The pacing of this novel is slow, much like that of Harold’s journey. That said, I wouldn’t change it a bit. The reader feels Harold’s pain, his anguish. We slowly trek alongside him in his journey, both physical and emotional.  The author’s writing is so beautiful, so addictive, so powerful.

“In walking, he freed the past that he had spent twenty years seeking to avoid, and now it  chattered and played through his head with a wild energy that was it’s own. He no longer saw distances in terms of miles. He measured it with his remembering.”

Well worth the journey, this is a book that will linger within me. Highly recommended.

 

Thank you to TLC Book Tours for providing me the opportunity to review this book. Be sure to check out the official tour page and check out all the stops in the tour!

 

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Review: The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

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  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Harper; Reprint edition (July 10, 2012)
  • ISBN-10: 0062206281
  • Source: Publisher

Set in Barcelona in 1957, The Prisoner of Heaven  shares the story of Daniel Sempere, his wife, Bea, and their new son. It is nearly Christmas and family friend Fermin Romero de Torres is about to be wed. One would think the mood would be jovial and celebratory but it is not. A strange man enters the Sempere family bookshop, purchasing one of the most valuable books in the shop.  He leaves the book for Fermin, inscribing the following note inside: “For Fermín Romero de Torres, who came back from among the dead and holds the key to the future.” His visit sparks a rehashing of memories and a feeling of dread for Fermin, taking him back to the 1940s and his questionable past in captivity that eventually led him to working at the store.

Unlike Zafon’s previous works, Fermin is no longer the sidekick that provides a bit of comic relief, instead he is one of the central characters to the plot. Worried that he cannot wed legally due to issues that took place in the past, Fermin reveals the secrets that have weighed heavily on his heart to young Daniel. Daniel vows to do what he can to provide Fermin, a man that has done so much for his family, illegal documents of identity that will allow him to wed.  The past that Fermin reveals to Daniel forces him to question a past he has grown to know as his own.

The Prisoner of Heaven  allows readers to reunite with characters they’ve grown to love and a setting that has changed dramatically since his last novel. The most endearing part of this novel was that it added new dimension and another glimpse of the character of David Martín, the focus of The Angel’s Game. While not nearly as long or in-depth as Zafon’s previous books, this novel made up with a shortness in length with the volumes of information it shared in the sparse 288 pages. It creates a bridge between his two previous works, filling in lost details and tying up loose ends. It so wonderfully crafted the story of these characters that I found myself wanting to go back and reread the two previous books, using the knowledge I gained in reading this one.

While the author does state that each book should be able to stand on its own, I do recommend reading them in the order they were published. A fourth book is promised, one I am certain will be worth the wait and will return readers to the long, flourishing and complex prose previously witnessed in his previous books.

Bottom line: this novel just affirms my opinion that Zafon’s books are brilliantly woven, finely crafted novels, modern classics that must be read and savored to be enjoyed. They are an experience that this reader isn’t soon to forget. Highly recommended.

Thank you TLC Book Tours for providing me the opportunity to review this book. Please be sure to check out the other tour stops along the way.

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Review: I Am Forbidden by Anouk Markovits

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  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Hogarth (May 8, 2012)
  • ISBN-10: 0307984737
  • Source: Publisher

In Transylvania in 1939, Josef is just five years old when he witnesses the murder of his family at the hands of the Romanian Iron Guard. He is rescued by a maid who raises him as her own son. Just five years later he rescues Mila, whose family is also murdered. Mila is taken to the home of Zalman Stern, a leader in the Satmar community. Mila is raised as Stern’s daughter, a sister to his daughter, Atara.  Despite the two girls being raised together, they are divided by Mila’s intense loyalty to her faith and Atara’s need discover a world of knowledge forbidden to her as a female.

The family is moved to Paris after Communism begins to take hold in their home country. Satmar is desperate for his daughters to continue a life in faith, ignoring the beliefs of the city around them. Mila continues her path with faith, marrying a man who abides by the strict fundamentalist doctrine. Despite Stern’s attempts to keep Atara on the path her faith has decided for her, she continues to ignore the strict guidelines her faith has bestowed upon her and continues to bury herself in a world of books and forbidden knowledge. To do so, she makes the heartbreaking decision to leave her family. Her desire to be an educated woman outweighs the bonds of family.

The girls are reunited years later. Mila, unable to get pregnant, does the unthinkable and steps outside the bounds of her faith in order to conceive. Her decision, if every discovered, will force her, her daughter, and her daughter’s children to be shunned from the community, forced to become outcasts.

I Am Forbidden at its core, is a heartbreaking story of faith and the power of family. The experience that Markovits had in her youth, raised by Hasidic Jewish parents, adds to the believability and reality of Atara and Mila’s fate. She broke ties with her own family in order to avoid an arranged marriage, attending college and seeking an education herself. It’s not difficult to see bits of her own life in that of Atara’s, a girl so desperate to be given the same access to education as of boys of her faith.

This novel is a truly compelling one. Despite having little knowledge of this faith, I was drawn in within a few pages, obsessed with what happened to these two young girls. While there was a great deal of pain and devastation in the girls’ lives, there is also certainly an element of hope and exhilaration that shines through the darkness.

While the first portion of the novel is a bit confusing due to my unfamiliarity with the religion and its customs, the rest of the novel is a truly beautiful piece of work. I was so moved by the characters, the intensity of my devotion to them continued to grow as their lives progressed. Despite sounding cliche, they truly did become a part of me, I find myself forgetting they are fictional characters.  The way Markovits develops them as individuals, their growth so profound, I find myself viewing them as living, breathing women.

Markovits gives her readers the gift of a glimpse inside such a private and contained religious group. It opened my eyes to a culture that I’ve heard of, but never really knew much about. This book has moved me like none other and has inspired me to learn more about this culture. Highly, highly recommended.

Hogarth is a newly formed Random House imprint. If this book is any indication of the types of books this imprint plans on publishing, I cannot wait to read what else they have in store.

Thank you to TLC Book Tours for providing me the opportunity to participate in this tour. Please be sure to check out the official tour page to learn more about the author as well as visit the other stops in this tour.

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Review: A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash

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  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: William Morrow (April 17, 2012)
  • ISBN-10: 0062088149
  • Source: Author

Nine-year-old Jesse Hall and his older, mute brother Christopher “Stump” live in the small town of Marshall, North Carolina. Jesse is very protective of Stump, a child who hasn’t spoken a word all his life. Attempting to sneak into their home after being out past their curfew, they witness something no child should ever see. This incident forces Jesse to face adult situations far beyond his years, in a sense, forcing him into adulthood.

The citizens of Marshall all look up to and revere their small town pastor, Chambliss. Like all people, he doesn’t deserve the lofty respect handed to him by his parishioners. He uses the church to satisfy his own needs, literally. His past is full of controversy, acts he’s performed in the name of religion, including snake-handling and “faith” healing. When his influence falls down upon Jesse and Stump’s mother, the repercussions are deadly and long-lasting.

Told by the voices of three individuals: sweet and naive Jesse; Adelaide, the town’s midwife who has for years tried to protect the town’s children from the grasp of Chambliss; and Clem Barefield, the town sheriff, the individual forced to deal with the tragedy that unleashes upon this small town. The variance of the voices didn’t add confusion, but instead allowed the reader to see multiple viewpoint, varying levels of participation in the story. We are granted unique access into the minds of these characters, their experiences and influence on the situations that take place within the story.

Cash has a gift for writing, each word builds upon one another to create, in whole, a work of art. Following is just one example:

What I took for being roots were actually stories and lies and promises that festered deep in Julie’s heart to where there wasn’t anything anybody could do to pry them loose. Those thick limbs and branches that kept Julie and Ben from seeing each other when they needed to the most weren’t nothing but arms and fingers that held Julie back, covered her eyes, and took her hand and led her to a place she never had no intention of going.

This skill Cash holds allows us, the reader, to get inside the culture of a small town, one hidden from the influence of other communities, one bound by its own beliefs. It’s not often that I come across a genuine American novel, one that portrays life so adequately and realistically.

A Land More Kind Than Home is a book I couldn’t put down, forcing me to put my life on hold until I finished reading it. I read it in one sitting and the moment I turned the last page, I wanted to pick it up and start it all over again.  The characters will hold a lifelong position in my heart, their story continues to resonate within my soul, weeks after reading the book. Without a doubt, this book will top my list of favorite books of the year. Highly recommended.

 

 

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Review: The Iguana Tree by Michel Stone

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  • Hardcover: 220 pages
  • Publisher: Hub City Press (March 1, 2012)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 189188588X

Hector, in an attempt to provide a better life for his wife, Lilia, and infant daughter, pays a coyote to transport him to the United States from Mexico.  The journey is long and perilous; dozens of men are stacked like sardines in the false-bottom of a toy truck. Upon arrival, he secures a job in South Carolina on a tree farm and begins to save money so that he might transport his family to the States to join him. He’s quite fortunate to have found this family, Lucas and Elizabeth. They are sympathetic to the issues he’s dealing with, and quickly a bond forms.

Meanwhile, back in Mexico, Lilia struggles without Hector.  When reasons keeping her from leaving Mexico disappear, Lilia takes matters into her own hands and secures her own transport to the States. In her mind, taking upon this decision, this journey, will prove to Hector how much she loves him.

The transport Lilia uses to freedom is quite different than Hector’s. Forced to repay her coyote in the most terrifying and traumatic of means, she’s witness to a host of violence among the smugglers. In addition, she’s forced to hand her daughter over to a stranger, with the promise that she will be returned to her within hours of her arrival in the States.

Upon arrival, Lilia’s daughter is  no where to be found, the woman who assured her safety is missing. When reunited with Hector, he is furious with her for exposing herself and their only child to danger. Hector doesn’t understand Lilia’s reasoning for going against his plan; in his eyes it is a sign of disrespect and lack of trust. The entire ordeal puts a great strain on their marriage; was it all worth it?

We’ve all witnessed the struggle with illegal immigration, but it’s not often that we get a glimpse of the other side. The story of Hector and Lilia is a truly emotional one, and one that is not unique. Their journey of hope and suffering pulls at your heartstrings; one can’t help but root for this couple in their struggle for ultimate happiness. While the ending is left open, I can’t help but believe they are able to attain this joy they risked so much to obtain.

Stone’s writing is elegant and the story well-crafted. While it is a short read at just over 200 pages, it is a story that will linger with you. I truly felt as though the characters were real and I’m desperately hoping that Stone writes more about them.

Bottom line: this is a book that will, without a doubt, join several other great books as a favorite of this year. Read it, recommend it. You won’t regret it. Highly recommended.

 

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