Times are tough in Depression-Era America. Eleven-year-old Turtle’s Mom keeps losing housekeeper jobs and getting her heart broken by no-good men. When her Mom gets a job with an old lady who doesn’t like children, she has no other choice but to send her daughter Turtle home to Key West to live with her sister, Minerva. Turtle really isn’t sure how her Mom is going to survive since she’s the sensible one of the two of them, but hard times call for desperate measures.

Turtle arrives with her cat, Smokey, only to discover she’s going to be living in a house with boys, a dog, and nobody wears shoes on the island. At least, she’s not the only one to have a nickname, there’s Beans, Too Bad, Slow Poke and others.

She rides along with the Diaper Gang, a bunch of boys who babysit for candy, and learns the secret family formula for diaper rash.

While in the Conch Republic, she learns about alligator pears (avocadoes), rum running, sponge fishing and most importantly, that she still has a Grandma.  Prior to this, her Mom had told Turtle that her Grandma was dead. Oddly, the hard-shelled Turtle is one of the few people that Nana Philly actually likes. She also meets Key West’s most famous denizen and advises him he should be writing for the funny papers.

Jennifer L. Holm is a descendent of one of those first dwellers on Key West.  ”Turtle in Paradise” is based upon old family stories that have been passed on through the generations.  The tale’s full of good-humored fun and a few hard lessons.  It’s not just a book that young adult readers will enjoy, though.  Anyone who wants to take a quick trip to the Conch Republic is going to love this one.

Reviewed by Rebecca Kyle, July 2010.

For a moment he thought of forgetting the bus depot. He had almost fifty dollars in his wallet, and that would be enough until he could find some type of job. [...] There was no work at all now back on the plateau, and his family would be better off if he stayed in the city and sent them part of his paycheck. There would be no J.W.’s to worry about, no long evenings in the cabin while his mother stared blankly at the fire, and no more quiet hatred or that anticipation of sudden violence when he stood next to a scab or a company man on a street corner.

The post-World War II economic boom, with the expansion in manufacturing fueled by increased consumer demand, should have been good for the coalfields of Appalachia. Instead, the social and economic devastation wrought by the Great Depression was prolonged by violent, protracted conflicts between union organizers and mine companies determined to keep the unions out and scrape every last cent of profit out of the region. This desperate poverty and equally desperate violence is the world in which Perry Woodson Hatfield James comes of age in James Lee Burke’s To the Bright and Shining Sun.

At the outset of the novel, Perry, scarcely sixteen years old, seems trapped in a never-ending cycle of futility and inevitability. Because of an injury his father suffered in a mining accident, Perry is the only member of his family fit to work regularly. Unfortunately, work, when it can be found, is degrading, dangerous, and does not pay enough to support a single person much less an entire family, not even in the eastern Kentucky hollow where Perry lives. Despite the promises of union benefits and wages, mechanization is eliminating hundreds of jobs in the big mines. To keep the unions out, mine operators either shut down or trucked in scabs from out of state. There might be work for a small operator, but those jobs offered with no benefits, hazardous conditions, “and the little money he made wouldn’t pay the charge at the store at the end of the month.” The only alternatives were to make moonshine for the Detroit syndicate or work for the Forest Service government keeping trails clear – jobs generally reserved for survivors, like Perry’s father, of mining accidents.

Forced into unemployment by a mine shutdown in anticipation of a union vote and denied an extension of credit to buy food for his family, Perry fears violence is the only option left to him. He is, after all, a descendant of both Devil Anse Hatfield and Frank James. Even as he helps plant explosives to drive off scabs, however, Perry tells himself, “It ain’t too late…. Run on down the road as far as you can get and it ain’t a part of you no longer.”

Hope arrives in the form of Job Corps, a social program initiated during the Johnson administration that provides young men with education and vocational training. Perry signs on and travels down to North Carolina, where he throws himself into the program, learning to write and operate a bulldozer, and cautiously nurturing a dream of a better life in the paradise of Cincinnati. The violence back home snatches Perry back, however, when a pro-union meeting is blown up and Perry’s father mortally injured. Having tasted opportunity, will Perry be able to escape the quagmire of desperation and futility, or will he give in to seeming inevitability, perpetuating the cycle of violence and poverty that destroyed his father?

To the Bright and Shining Sun was James Lee Burke’s second published novel, and thus falls outside the purview of the Dave Robicheaux and Billy Bob Holland series he is better known for (the first Robicheaux novel was published in 1987, and the first Holland book came out a decade later). Nonetheless, it presents early evidence of the hallmarks of Burke’s writing: the role of place and geography as character, the psychological impact of prolonged poverty, the use of violence in pursuit of social justice, a sympathetic law enforcement officer.

I wasn’t very surprised to read on Burke’s Web site that he worked for the Job Corps. In fact, the section of To the Bright and Shining Sun where Perry is with the Job Corps doesn’t quite seem to fit with the rest of the story, and I suspect Mr. Henson may have been modeled on the author. It’s the sort of thing one might expect to find from a writer still learning the ropes. Were Burke to write To the Bright and Shining Sun today, now that he’s got over two dozen novels to his name, the Job Corps interlude would probably fit in more seamlessly with the rest of the story.

Ultimately, while To the Bright and Shining Sun doesn’t have quite the emotional heft of, say, The Tin Roof Blowdown, it is nonetheless indubitably a James Lee Burke novel. I recommend it in particular to readers familiar only with Burke’s Dave Robicheaux and/or Billy Bob Holland series, as an example both of Burke’s early work and an atypical setting for him, and to readers interested in Appalachia in the 20th century.

Reviewed by Laura Taylor on Beyond the Blurb; reprinted here with permission.

“Greyhound” opens in the darkest hours of the night. Sebastien can’t sleep and soon, he’ll be leaving. His Mother’s getting married for the umpteenth time and he’s not even invited to this ceremony. Dick, the groom du jour, doesn’t like kids and it’s apparent from the hits he’s inflicted on Sebastien.

The couple needs some ‘alone time.’ So, his Mother’s packing him up on a Greyhound bus at 3:00 AM to ride from Stockton, CA to Altoona, PA where he will visit his grandparents. His mom gives him $35 and tells him to stay out of trouble. By the time he’s boarded, there’s not even anyone to wave goodbye to in the bus terminal. Thus, begins a cross-country odyssey for young Sebastien that will keep you turning pages through the night as the highway flies by beneath the bus’s tires.

I first read Steffan Piper’s extraordinary “Greyhound” when it was submitted for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards (ABNA) contest in 2008. Every time I’ve seen a Greyhound bus passing on the highway, I’ve thought of Sebastien Rane or perhaps a kid like him riding alone…Yes, the story’s that extraordinary.

Reviewed by Rebecca Kyle.

Imagine you’ve come home and a surprise package is waiting for you.  You’re a high school boy, no money to order anything and it’s not your birthday.  You’re excited opening the book only to discover seven cassette tapes inside.

Cassette tapes — nothing in the house will even play them, but your Dad has an old stereo out on his workbench in the garage.  Listening, you hear the voice of a ghost — Hannah Baker, one of your classmates and a girl you could easily love.  Only a few weeks ago, she committed suicide.

The thirteen sides of the tapes (the last side is blank) take Clay Jensen a night to hear. They include a map, so he can follow along. He learns of the thirteen reasons–and thirteen people–whose actions contributed to Hannah’s death. Clay is one of those people and he dreads learning what part he played in this tragedy. Along the way, he discovers hard truths about his classmates and himself.

I picked up this book solely on Sherman Alexie’s recommendation.  Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is one of the most inspiring books I have ever read.  I don’t think any young adult library should be without a copy.  I’m adding Th1rteen R3asons Why to that list.

Reviewed by Rebecca Kyle, April 2010

Sleep would not come easy this time and he knew it as soon as he blinked and opened his eyes and there was no difference between the two. He began and suffered through an inventory of the reasons why he should leave and why he shouldn’t be allowed to be out at all. He wondered if regret would ever relax its hold on him. It doesn’t have to be that way, he told himself. Sleep and tomorrow you can be a new man, a free man.

Over the course of a single night, Bandy Dorner loses everything: his home, his pregnant wife, and, after gunning down a cop in a drunken rage, his freedom. Twenty years later, Bandy’s given the opportunity to start over from scratch.

I’ve put off writing this review because I’m still not sure what I think of Then Came the Evening. In general, I’d say it’s a good book; on Goodreads I gave it 3 stars, though I lean more towards 3.5. The descriptions of Idaho are well-done, the characters are mostly well-drawn, and the writing style did not fall victim to clichés and clutter, though I did have issues with sentence structure at times. While Then Came the Evening bears some of the hallmarks of a first novel, I also think it reveals genuine potential, and believe (and hope) that Brian Hart has a long and successful writing career ahead of him.

I cannot wholeheartedly recommend Then Came the Evening, however. More than anything, the passivity of the three main characters left me unsatisfied when I finished reading. Iona and Tracy at times show a hint of drive, but Bandy’s almost complete surrender to circumstance nearly overshadows everything. Things just happen to him, and his response speaks of futility more than any other emotion. Sometimes being a victim of circumstance or being swept along by the current of life can make for compelling fiction, but this is not one of those times. I pity Bandy, but I don’t care about him.

I also found Iona’s characterization weak in comparison to those of Bandy and Tracy. I never got a sense for what motivates her to make the choices she does; while I appreciate not being subjected to several hundred pages of navel-gazing, I was left with more questions than answers by the end.

I think the comparisons to Cormac McCarthy I’ve seen on Goodreads and Amazon misrepresent both McCarthy and Hart. While the bleakness of both the narrative and the landscape does bear some resemblance to McCarthy, what distinguishes McCarthy in my mind is his use of the monstrous and the grotesque in his writing. There’s nothing truly grotesque or monstrous about Then Came the Evening; it’s just bleak and empty and stripped almost completely bare of hope. In that respect, comparisons to Annie Proulx might be more appropriate.

Despite my reservations about Then Came the Evening, I believe that Brian Hart shows potential, and look forward to further works from him.

Reviewed by Laura Taylor on Beyond the Blurb; reprinted here with permission.

A Country Affair

A Country Affair
Rebecca Shaw
Three Rivers Press, 2006
ISBN 1400098203
Trade Paperback

I’m an addict when it comes to the heartwarming sort of small town story, the kind that involves a large cast of characters living unremarkable lives but you can’t help wanting to know what’s going to happen next.  You know the kind of books I mean, Jan Karon’s Mitford, Ann B. Ross’s Miss Julia, Thomas Kinkade’s Cape Light, Jennifer Chiaverini’s Elm Creek Quilts.  The geographical setting doesn’t matter too much, although I prefer North America or the UK and, if animals are involved, I like it even more.  James Herriot is one of my favorite writers and I never tire of his Yorkshire Dales veterinarian stories so, when I came across this book, I settled down for what I was sure would be a comfortable read.  It didn’t quite  make it but it came close.

Kate Howard has just taken a job as a receptionist in a large veterinary practice in Barleybridge, a picture-postcard English village where life is generally charming.  Most of the novel revolves around the doings of the people, not so much about the animals, and I missed that.   I didn’t like all the characters but that’s okay as it would be a bit too sappy if everybody was likable.  Still,  one of the vets commits a fairly cowardly act and Kate herself is a tad too naive.  I reminded myself, though, that she’s just nineteen so she’s allowed to be a bit immature.

I didn’t dislike this book but I didn’t wholeheartedly like it either.  Rebecca Shaw is a bestselling author in England so I’ll be reading the next in the trilogy to see if Kate and everybody else in the village will grow on me.

Recommended with reservations.

Reviewed by Lelia Taylor