A gloomy but eye-opening look at the startling impact of school sports.
The sudden death of a former high school football star shakes a small Texas community in Bills’ novella.
Deputy Lane Fisher works at the sheriff’s department in his hometown of Tarry, Texas. One day, he happens upon a parked van with a bloody body inside—certainly not something he witnesses every day in his small burg. Signs ultimately point to a likely suicide, but what’s even more shocking is the victim’s identity: The dead man is Lane’s high-school football teammate Clifton Baird, the so-called Tarry Tornado. His hulking size had made him a star on the football field in the early 1980s (“he was a tank that ran like a gazelle”). That all changed after a collision during practice left another player horribly injured. But was Clifton’s resultant guilt the reason his pro football career was so short? Was that why he felt suicide was his only choice? Lane reunites with old teammates and Clifton’s ex; answers to the mystery of this once-revered athlete’s fate may not be quite what the deputy expects. Bills zeroes in on the pressures that high school athletes face: The coach humiliated players during practices, and there’s a possibility that Tarry locals blamed the injured teammate for derailing a potentially stellar season. The somber narrative is layered with haunting images involving a man who couldn’t let his past go. An especially memorable scene finds Lane looking through Clifton’s home, where he had lived alone; the TV is on, playing an old football game, surrounded by VHS tapes of high-school games. The final act retains the overall bluntness of the narrative with a surprising but effective turn. Trailing this story is the bonus tale “Dead to Rights,” in which Texan Randy has a surreal experience—he wakes up in the middle of a road and runs into a Tex Cobb-lookalike with news Randy may not want to hear.
A gloomy but eye-opening look at the startling impact of school sports.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9798218264642
Page Count: 92
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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