Harun's novel reverberates with nostalgia, psychological insight, and the sacredness of community.
An intimate look at a small Pacific Northwest town and the complex lives of its people.
In early 1963, in order to reinvigorate the American people after the nervous terrors of the Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy had an idea for a national event that could bring folks together and make a show of the country’s spirit. It was called “The Big Walk,” and it was originally aimed at the Marine Corps—a challenge to walk 50 miles in 20 hours. Soon people all over the country had taken up the challenge and with grit, stamina, and patriotic fervor, planned out and hiked 50 mile paths in and around their towns and cities. This community effort is the framing device of Harun’s novel, a premise that works extremely well not only as a way to delineate her characters as they painstakingly traverse the thick woods and hunters’ paths of the Washington coast and forestland, but also thematically, as a metaphor for the ways in which these people climb, slip, stumble, bump, and redirect themselves through their lives. The residents of Humtown making up this motley pack of sojourners include the local gossip, who happens to be the town’s sole phone operator; a teenage girl, desperately afraid of her abusive brother, with a stolen item to dispose of; a recently widowed schoolteacher racked by grief and plagued by thoughts of suicide; a cheerful yet peculiar man who may or may not be a Catholic priest; and an assortment of Boy Scouts and old-time farmers with naturalist skills to display and courage to prove. Overshadowing all in this exceptionally well-drawn, dusky world is the eerie disappearance of a young mother and her two children, the husband likely enough responsible for it but with no evidence against him, a dark man skittering nervously, threateningly round the edges of the group’s physically punishing, ultimately redemptive path.
Harun's novel reverberates with nostalgia, psychological insight, and the sacredness of community.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9781946724656
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Acre
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Middling for this stellar series, which makes it another must-read, preferably in one sitting.
Unbeknownst to each other, Wyoming Fish and Game Warden Joe Pickett and outlaw falconer Nate Romanowski embark on equally urgent pursuits that converge in a way neither of them suspects.
Nate, who’s been off the grid ever since his wife, Liv, was killed in a fire intended to kill him too in Three-Inch Teeth (2024), has sworn vengeance on murderous conspirator Axel Soledad. After shooting several of Soledad’s hirelings, he joins forces with his friend and fellow Special Forces vet Geronimo Jones, who’s tracked him down, to chase his quarry deep into the woods. Governor Spencer Rulon, meanwhile, has pressed Joe into service once again to find veteran hunting guide Spike Rankin and his new assistant, Mark Eisele, who just happens to be Rulon’s son-in-law. Although nobody’s heard from the men for two days, the governor doesn’t want his wife and daughter to know they’re missing, and that means not alerting the media or the local sheriff, who’s no fan of Rulon’s anyway. Readers who’ve already seen Rankin and Eisele overpowered and imprisoned by a mysterious crew they ran into while they were setting up for the elk hunting season will assume that Soledad is behind their kidnapping as well. But Box will keep everyone guessing about exactly how Soledad and the ragtag military cult he’s gathered around him plan to confront the military-industrial complex he’s persuaded them is a clear and present danger. You know you’re in for a wild ride when Joe, saying goodbye to Marybeth, his long-suffering wife, promises her, “I’ll do my job and not cross the line.”
Middling for this stellar series, which makes it another must-read, preferably in one sitting.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593851050
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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