A sharp, affecting novel of pain and love.
In Musick’s debut literary novel, a flustered teenager tries to save her friend and uncover the secrets of her family.
Texas, 1980. Sporty, 14-year-old Lilac has a reputation as a tomboy. She doesn’t have any friends since her old brother stopped hanging out with her, so she happily accepts attention from Esther, a girl across the street, even though Esther’s family “wasn’t our kind of people.” When Esther kisses Lilac on the mouth, Lilac goes along with, not wanting to jeopardize the new friendship. However, that very same day, Esther’s mother is murdered while out shopping with Lilac’s mom. Lilac can tell her mother—a deeply religious and condescending woman—is lying to the police about what happened, but she can’t understand why. Her father, an accountant who dresses as a cowboy to ingratiate himself with the locals, is no help either. Lilac attempts to cover for her friend when Esther acts out following her mother’s death. At the same time, Lilac must contend with the seizures she’s been suffering from as well as with a family secret she discovers. As the story unfolds, a history of abuse, violence, and lies concerning both families emerges, leaving young Lilac struggling just to keep her head above water. Musick’s prose, as narrated by Lilac, is earnest but naïve, reflecting the protagonist’s implicit autism: “Esther had her own secrets, of course. We’d only been best friends for a handful of days, but I felt betrayed anyway. I was surrounded by secrets, drowning in them, and nobody had taught me how to swim this river.” It’s a heartbreaking story, filled with abusive adults and traumatized children, and one cannot help but feel deeply for Lilac and Esther. The subject can be emotionally difficult, but Musick never loses sight of the humanity of his characters. Through the believably brave and endearingly honest Lilac, the author explores issues of religious and sexual trauma, neurodivergence and disability, grief and loneliness.
A sharp, affecting novel of pain and love.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-953971-02-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Cinnabar Moth Publishing LLC
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.
Many years after her older brother, Bear, went missing, Barbara Van Laar vanishes from the same sleepaway camp he did, leading to dark, bitter truths about her wealthy family.
One morning in 1975 at Camp Emerson—an Adirondacks summer camp owned by her family—it's discovered that 13-year-old Barbara isn't in her bed. A problem case whose unhappily married parents disdain her goth appearance and "stormy" temperament, Barbara is secretly known by one bunkmate to have slipped out every night after bedtime. But no one has a clue where's she permanently disappeared to, firing speculation that she was taken by a local serial killer known as Slitter. As Jacob Sluiter, he was convicted of 11 murders in the 1960s and recently broke out of prison. He's the one, people say, who should have been prosecuted for Bear's abduction, not a gardener who was framed. Leave it to the young and unproven assistant investigator, Judy Luptack, to press forward in uncovering the truth, unswayed by her bullying father and male colleagues who question whether women are "cut out for this work." An unsavory group portrait of the Van Laars emerges in which the children's father cruelly abuses their submissive mother, who is so traumatized by the loss of Bear—and the possible role she played in it—that she has no love left for her daughter. Picking up on the themes of families in search of themselves she explored in Long Bright River (2020), Moore draws sympathy to characters who have been subjected to spousal, parental, psychological, and physical abuse. As rich in background detail and secondary mysteries as it is, this ever-expansive, intricate, emotionally engaging novel never seems overplotted. Every piece falls skillfully into place and every character, major and minor, leaves an imprint.
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593418918
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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