Rendon’s book will break your heart, but it will also inspire and inform.
A young Native American woman confronts pervasive violence, standing up for others who might be dismissed or forgotten.
Quill is running near her home on Minnesota’s Red Pine reservation when she hears a scream—and then silence. Spooked, she brings her husband, Crow, to help examine the area the next day, finding signs of a scuffle and a single beaded earring left behind in the snow. The tribal cops search the forest to no avail. So Quill and her two best friends, Punk and Gaylyn, use their community ties to investigate because they know the truth: “There are between two thousand and five thousand missing and murdered Indian women in this country. Nobody gives a shit.” This novel is Rendon’s way of bringing attention to these often ignored stories. The ravages of racist governmental policies, poverty, and addiction, along with the lawless nature of the camps for men working on the pipelines near the reservation, create a perfect storm of violence. A woman is drugged and nearly kidnapped at a local casino; her cousin is kidnapped, then escapes. When a young girl is abducted from a Walmart bathroom then found murdered, Quill and her friends can no longer stand by in silence. Through it all, they run, finding it a way to quiet the anxiety, the frustration, the anger of being treated by the larger world like they don’t count. Quill is a charismatic character, strong and fierce in both her independence and her love for her husband, children, and community, willing to risk herself to keep others safe. This novel is written in protest of the epidemic of missing Indigenous women and centuries of painful history: “We have lived with losing loved ones for century after century.” But it also lifts up the healing power of female friendship, motherhood, and generational knowledge: “And we still have babies and keep loving.”
Rendon’s book will break your heart, but it will also inspire and inform.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780593496527
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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