by Jeffrey Dunn ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 18, 2024
A riveting unfolding of past traumas and joyful celebration of nature and renewal.
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In Dunn’s novel, a retired English teacher returns to the now-transformed Appalachian Rust Belt town he lived in during his senior year of high school, revisiting the love and loss he experienced a half-century ago.
An unnamed narrator remarks that he feels like a “bloomed-out iris in a patch of Wildcat mayapples” now that he’s has retired to Wildcat, a mining/mill town where “Interlopers are rare, even ones like [him] who lived here for a short time.” He has returned, some 50 years later—after living in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Upstate New York—at the suggestion of an old friend, Dominic Vitali, who informed him of “Wildcat’s magical changes, ones so different from the disastrous ones of the past” and the news that Carolyn Zalewski, the narrator’s first love when he lived in Wildcat during high school, is back in town. The main character, who had a career as an English teacher and writer, describes “Hotel Wildcat, my new home”—a living/dining collective with inhabitants engaged in artisanal activities (mushroom farming, sassafras furniture molding, and so on) and enjoying locally sourced food. He walks around Wildcat, interacting with various townsfolk and locales, including the riverfront where there are “chunks of concrete scattered here and downstream, a result of the time someone blew a hole in the dam.” The narrative eventually details the momentous events at which it hints early on—mine and dam explosions and a mill fire—that, decades before, jolted the town and the narrator’s relationship with Carolyn. The story ends with sightings of ghosts (dubbed “The Shadows”) that linger in the area, and a celebratory community event.
Dunn appropriately gives his book the subtitle “An Appalachian Romance”; it is indeed a love story, although it’s less about the man and woman at its center and more about the strikingly vibrant world that the author has created. The exact location of fictional Wildcat within Appalachia isn’t revealed, and one can argue that Dunn’s depiction of a modern Rust Belt town as a hub of back-to-the-earth sustainability and artistry is a utopian vision. Still, with his specifics about Wildcat’s new craft-making (who knew sassafras had such uses?), Dunn effectively makes the case that retooling is possible for any town, which makes this book a welcome alternative to the downbeat works that one often sees regarding the region. The novel’s other strengths include how Dunn dramatically shapes the narrative with headline-style punctations; he gives the word “Bang” its own page, just past the novel’s midpoint. His slow revelation of what led to the town’s tragic events is also effective, as when he introduces Carolyn’s brooding brother and the “sickly yellow” interior of her home. At its core, however, this novel is a lovely ode to nature, from a ramps-collecting idyll of young lovers to the “confluence” of the riverfront where “all thoughts and feelings and experiences fail, and it’s upon places like these that The Shadows endure.” This theme culminates in “Lost Surreal Interlude,” a marvelous final section that offers a lightning round of observations of the natural world.
A riveting unfolding of past traumas and joyful celebration of nature and renewal.Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9798873878420
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 27, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Jeffrey Dunn
by Ali Hazelwood ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 4, 2025
A surprisingly sensual sports romance.
A collegiate diver and swimmer secretly pursue kink together, and risk falling in love along the way.
Scarlett Vandermeer is struggling. Despite a successful recovery from the injury that almost ended her Stanford diving career, she hasn’t been able to get her head together, and it’s affecting her performance. Plus, she’s trying to stay focused on getting into medical school. A relationship would be out of the question. By comparison, Lukas Blomqvist is a swimming idol, a record-breaker who wins medals as easily as breathing, and Scarlett has long been convinced he would never look in her direction—until one fateful night when a mutual friend lets slip that they have something unexpected in common: Scarlett likes to be submissive in the bedroom, while Lukas prefers to take a dominant approach. Now, they both know a big secret about each other, and it’s something neither of them can stop thinking about. It’s Lukas who suggests they have a fling—purely physical, just to take the edge off, so Scarlett can get out of her own head and stop overthinking her dives. Initially, their arrangement is easy to stick to, but the more time they spend together, the more Scarlett starts to realize that what she feels for Lukas is more than physical attraction. Complicating the situation is the fact that Scarlett’s friend Penelope Ross used to go out with Lukas, and the longer Scarlett keeps mum about her true feelings for him, the more difficult it is to keep the situation hidden from another person she really cares about. While Scarlett and Lukas’ relationship does begin as a physical one, their deeper psychological connection takes a little too long to emerge amid all the other storylines, resulting in a somewhat rushed resolution. However, Hazelwood’s latest is proof of the depth and maturity that has emerged in her writing over the years, and it highlights her embrace of sexier, more emotional elements than were present in her original STEMinist rom-coms.
A surprisingly sensual sports romance.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593641057
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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New York Times Bestseller
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
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