A selection of profound stories teeming with a host of relatable individuals.
Everyday life is a journey for the characters in Drago’s short-story collection.
In “The Pit,” an unnamed narrator details their blue-collar job at the Basic Oxygen Lance Furnace. The “unbearable” heat that comes with slagging steel, coupled with inherent dangers (including a task that only a 300-pound man can do), give the impression that this workplace is the very pit of Hell. The casts in these eight tales lead ostensibly quiet lives that harbor turmoil: “Mountain Stone” finds Ginger Dressinger hoping to reconnect with the Rocky Mountains she visited years ago with her family. But this simple endeavor proves nearly impossible, as no resort has a vacancy, leaving her to spend a rainy day burdened by resentments she struggles to let go. Likewise, structural engineer Andy has a new job lined up in the closing story, “Equilibrium,” when his co-worker, Clinton Hanley, having just won the Irish Sweepstakes, offers to hire him. Clinton’s plan is to build a small city in Arizona with an unusual design that may be too much for Andy to handle. Many of the characters herein seemingly feel out of place; that’s certainly true for the narrator in “Salmon,” who happily joins potential romantic interest Miriam on a train ride from Canada to California. Ensconced six cars behind Miriam’s sleeper car, he soon gets the miserable sense that he’s merely “third class” compared to the woman he’s pursuing. He’s just one of a handful of sympathetic souls Drago introduces, including a mother with terminal cancer, a janitor who has livelier conversations with plants than people, and a vegetable/marijuana farmer who realizes that clearing others off his land may not be what he really wants. The author’s unadorned yet insightful prose sparkles: “They were green eyes and detailed sharply with intelligence and a fatal ingredient, fatal to me, and this element was humor.”
A selection of profound stories teeming with a host of relatable individuals.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2023
ISBN: 9798888550069
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Chestnut Hill Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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
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
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