Book of the Day Roundup: June 17-21, 2024
Moonshine
A Life in Pursuit of White Liquor
Alec Wilkinson
Padgett Powell, contributor
Nonpareil Books
Softcover $18.95 (176pp)
978-1-56792-805-1
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
It’s impossible to read Alec Wilkinson’s Moonshine without feeling the magnetic draw of its star figure, state revenue agent Garland Bunting. Wilkinson’s short profile, reprinted for a new generation of readers, follows Bunting and other charismatic agents through the hills and hollers of North Carolina as they search for illegal whiskey stills and their slick, wary proprietors.
This collection of high-grade “slice of life” reportage is structured around short, punchy anecdotes and secondhand legends. As the “Yankee” outsider, Wilkinson foregoes standard exposition and lets his subjects’ language and quirks take the fore. He relates how the potbellied, middle-aged veteran Bunting talks, sings, acts, dances, and weasels his way out of deadly situations using only charm and confidence. Characters trade “big fish” stories of busted whiskey stills and outrageous stakeouts and go about their deadly work with cool nonchalance. While these outlaw bootleggers make for interesting studies, it’s the men who dedicate their lives to catching them who serve as the book’s most interesting characters.
Those unfamiliar with bootlegging may be surprised by how Moonshine hits them. It’s an intoxicating portrait of the rural American South in all of its charm, danger, desperation, and color.
ISAAC RANDEL (April 25, 2024)
Frederick Douglass
A Novel
Sidney Morrison
Hawthorne Books
Hardcover $32.00 (688pp)
978-0-9988257-9-3
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Sidney Morrison’s biographical novel Frederick Douglass follows the famed abolitionist from slavery to international stardom.
Frederick Douglass dreams of escaping enslavement for years. But after completing the long and dangerous journey to the North, he finds that freedom comes attached to the insidious strings of segregation and prejudice. He channels his frustration into activism, joining the abolitionist movement and sharing his own experiences with the horrors of slavery. His activism takes many forms, with his writing, especially his autobiographical work, playing a prominent role in his work and personal life.
Throughout Douglass’s story, he deals with white people who are patronizing at best and cruel at worst. Their goodwill is conditional on factors that are often outside of his control. His alliances shift over time, sprouting and flourishing only to snap under the weight of political differences and clashing personalities. Still, though he’s sometimes laid low, Douglass never recognizes total defeat.
Morrison’s understated prose conveys this alongside the major events of Douglass’s life, from the triumphs of his greatest speeches to the devastating deaths of his relatives and friends. Douglass is a complicated hero who devotes himself to his crusade at the expense of his growing family, leaving them for stretches of time to recruit supporters and raise funds. Strong-willed and accustomed to having to fight, he alienates friends and allies, picking arguments where there are none; he struggles as long as he can to resist his desire for violent revolution. And the transcendent final chapter, which is rife with symbolism, emphasizes the justness of his mission and his visionary spirit, which saw him through to the end of his long, productive life.
Frederick Douglass is a sprawling biographical novel about a complex man with a singular objective: to achieve full racial equality for all Americans.
EILEEN GONZALEZ (April 25, 2024)
Cicada Summer
Erica McKeen
W. W. Norton & Company
Softcover $16.99 (240pp)
978-1-324-07381-9
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
In Erica McKeen’s dazzling novel Cicada Summer, a young woman, her ex-lover, and her aging grandfather reckon with the aftermath of tragedy while cloistered together in a remote cabin in the Canadian wilderness.
In the summer of 2020, mid-pandemic, a heatwave settles over Eastern Canada, and a brood of cicadas emerges from deep beneath the earth. Following her mother’s death, Husha moves into her grandfather’s ramshackle home and becomes his caretaker. In this apocalyptic setting, the pair are soon joined by Husha’s ex, Nellie, who arrives unannounced. They have another strange and alluring companion, too: a book of short stories written by Husha’s mother.
In the book within a book, a marine biologist discovers a new fish whose extraordinary anatomy inexplicably alters her own. A hole opens in a family’s driveway and begins to devour its surroundings. A woman grappling with infertility buries her miscarriages beneath saplings that begin to speak in their own uncanny, poetic language. The creatures in the stories are multifunctioning metaphors for grief, change, memory, trauma, and care. But they are more than metaphors, too; their singular magic comes from being rendered as living, breathing beings that slip beyond the confines of their roles as signs.
Horror blends seamlessly with surreal beauty as the characters reckon with grief, longing, and the dark gulf of memory. The language is pulsing and atmospheric, reminiscent of the eerie cadences of fairy tales or dreams. The multiple storylines and points of view are balanced with ease and delicacy. Further, each short story in Husha’s mother’s book informs the core narrative while maintaining its standalone integrity and impact.
Grief is less a feeling than a palpable physical presence in Cicada Summer, a novel whose web of interwoven stories illuminate and enlarge each other.
BELLA MOSES (April 25, 2024)
The Luna Sisters and Their Amazing Lunafish
I Like to Read Comics
Dan Yaccarino
Holiday House
Hardcover $14.99 (40pp)
978-0-8234-5636-9
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Nera and Lucy are two sisters who live on the moon, and that’s about all they have in common. All they can agree on is their Luna Fish, Moona—until Nera agrees to sell her to an aquarium. As the sisters set out to deliver Moona to her new home, they encounter dangers and obstacles that require them to work together and appreciate one another’s talents. Flower-printed octopi and retro typography give this picture book a groovy flare.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (April 25, 2024)
The Witchstone
Henry H. Neff
Blackstone Publishing
Hardcover $26.99 (550pp)
979-821201554-7
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
The Witchstone is a humorous urban fantasy novel in which a smooth-talking demon helps to break a generational curse.
When the brutal bureaucrats of Hell give lackadaisical Laszlo an ultimatum—improve his performance as a Curse Keeper in one week or die—he whisks a tough teenager, Maggie, and her precocious brother, Lump, away on a globe-trotting journey to collect the artifacts that might save all their lives. Though the siblings don’t know if they can trust this supernatural stranger, they’re willing to risk it to escape lives of stigma and pain.
Featuring a plucky tone and imaginative worldbuilding, the story alternates between Laszlo’s and Maggie’s distinctive voices. Maggie grapples with existential questions and intense emotions, and her understandings of her world and herself shift. Meanwhile, wisecracking Laszlo drops cheeky pop culture references and goes on rakish tangents about his past misadventures.
But there are also mature depictions of sex and violence in this tale, whose quick pace reflects the urgency of the trio’s quest. The international settings are evocative, capturing local culture with small but resonant details, as of the meticulous way that coffee is served in an Italian café. And each scene advances the plot by providing context about magic hidden within the human world or by developing the characters, whose relationships are heartfelt and compelling. There’s fierce sibling love between Maggie and Lump, Maggie and Laszlo exchange sharp but affectionate banter, and a mischievous student-teacher dynamic develops between Laszlo and Lump. The emotional stakes become as high as the physical ones. New twists abound, and the chapters often end with cliffhangers.
The Witchstone is a raucous fantasy novel that centers otherworldly intrigue and the meaningful bonds formed between unlikely allies.
JENNA LEFKOWITZ (April 25, 2024)
Kathy Young
