An astonishing—often suspenseful, always compassionate—depiction of humanity and the ties that bind us.
With an honest voice and abundant imagination, Rourks’ Southern gothic debut explores human kinship, violence, and isolation in rural Louisiana.
“There really isn’t anything astonishing about the moon trees,” says the narrator of the title story in this mighty debut. “As a matter of fact, some of them are lost. No one bothered to keep track of where they’d been planted, had never even made the plaques.” Much like these trees—their once-valued seeds taken into space to orbit the Earth—the characters in Rourks’ 15 inventive stories have been forgotten by society; on the surface, they’ve been left simply to grow, work, fight the elements, then die along the swamplands of Louisiana. “Everything Shining,” for example, describes the life of a laid-off, injured oil rig laborer. As he struggles to make sense of his new life, he begrudgingly lets his cousin store stolen scrap metal in his backyard, unaware of the disastrous consequences that will follow. In “Ghosts,” a woman fixates on the events leading up to her mother’s suicide as she prepares to meet her wife’s family and to give birth to a child of her own. While in “Pinched Magnolias,” a parish sheriff helps her sister cover up a violent crime, in “El Feo,” an ex-con works to build a new life for his family, even when he suspects he might have been framed for murder. With these stories, Rourks creates literary “plaques” for her characters—carving out space for and drawing attention to their experiences whether they are Pizza Hut employees, lawbreakers, or those too afraid to leave the house. Through her dynamic prose—graceful even as it propels each piece forward—she realizes the humanity of each individual. Themes of poverty, anguish, violence, and family loyalty—for better or worse—tie together these short tales. Still, amid such bleakness, Rourks infuses a sort of magic into each one. These worlds, alive with both the nature of Louisiana and the empathy the author brings to each character, will leave you eager for more.
An astonishing—often suspenseful, always compassionate—depiction of humanity and the ties that bind us.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62557-013-0
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Black Lawrence Press
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose...
Sparks (The Longest Ride, 2013, etc.) serves up another heaping helping of sentimental Southern bodice-rippage.
Gone are the blondes of yore, but otherwise the Sparks-ian formula is the same: a decent fellow from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches falls in love with a decent girl from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches—and is still suffering the consequences. The guy is innately intelligent but too quick to throw a punch, the girl beautiful and scary smart. If you hold a fatalistic worldview, then you’ll know that a love between them can end only in tears. If you hold a Sparks-ian one, then true love will prevail, though not without a fight. Voilà: plug in the character names, and off the story goes. In this case, Colin Hancock is the misunderstood lad who’s decided to reform his hard-knuckle ways but just can’t keep himself from connecting fist to face from time to time. Maria Sanchez is the dedicated lawyer in harm’s way—and not just because her boss is a masher. Simple enough. All Colin has to do is punch the partner’s lights out: “The sexual harassment was bad enough, but Ken was a bully as well, and Colin knew from his own experience that people like that didn’t stop abusing their power unless someone made them. Or put the fear of God into them.” No? No, because bound up in Maria’s story, wrinkled with the doings of an equally comely sister, there’s a stalker and a closet full of skeletons. Add Colin’s back story, and there’s a perfect couple in need of constant therapy, as well as a menacing cop. Get Colin and Maria to smooching, and the plot thickens as the storylines entangle. Forget about love—can they survive the evil that awaits them out in the kudzu-choked woods?
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose corn syrup, stickily sweet but irresistible.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2061-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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