The Wolf Road by Beth Lewis

Survival/revenge/redemption + tough-talkin’, knife-wieldin’ heroine + post-apocalyptic setting + a strong female friendship. “The Wolf Road is an intimate cat-and-mouse tale of revenge and redemption, played out against a vast, unforgiving landscape—told by an indomitable young heroine fighting to escape her past and rejoin humanity.”

“Way I reckon it, men killed more wolves than wolves ever killed men. I know who I’m more afraid of.”

Elka is orphaned when she is seven years old and taken in by a reclusive man living in the woods. She affectionately calls him Trapper and he teaches her how to survive in the wild. A decade later she visits a nearby town and finds a wanted poster featuring Trapper’s distinctive tattooed face. Her entire worldview is shattered; the man she’d built up in her head “as some kind a’ god” unforgivable crimes. She may be his next target now that she knows the truth. She goes on the run in hopes of finding the parents who abandoned her to mine for gold in the far north town of Halveston. But the more distance she gets from Trapper, the more she starts remembering the events of their life together. She starts seeing these moments in a different light and wonders if she shares some of the blame for his crimes. What follows is a tale of revenge and second chances, as Elka faces the brutal, unpredictable conditions of the wild and the even more dangerous threats from the “civilized” world.

I couldn’t unravel all them strands, all them lies and feelings what got knotted up over the years. Any lie can turn to truth if you believe it long enough.

Seventeen-year-old Elka received very little education in anything except survival and is illiterate. She is a straight talker and speaks with somewhat of a cowboy dialect. The story takes place mostly in the woods, but the towns she encounters have a strong Wild West feel. There’s good mix of quiet moments and action. It has a lot of violence and gore. Hunting is an integral part of Elka’s survival and she goes into great detail about the trapping and preparation of animals for food. There is also stomach-turning brutality against humans. The setting is post-apocalyptic North America, but the specific details of the event that led to humans living in such dire conditions remain vague. The details have been verbally passed down through generations and it sounds like it might have something to do with the Cold War. The big event is called by many different names (the Fall, the Reformation, Rapture, the Damn Stupid) and it occurred around the time Elka’s grandmother was a baby. The story doesn’t really have much to do with “the Damn Stupid,” except for the way people wasted their blank slate. It is more about Elka’s physical and mental journey. I really admired Elka’s strength and independence.

I don’t much like roads. Roads is some other man’s path that people follow no question. All my life I lived by rules of the forest and rules of myself. One a’ them rules is don’t go trusting another man’s path. No matter if that’s a real one trodden into dirt or all them twists and turns his life has taken. People do it, they do what their mommies and daddies did, they make them same mistakes, they have them same joys and hurts, they just repeating. Trees don’t grow exactly where their momma is; ain’t no room, ain’t enough light and water so they end up wilting and dying off. It’s the same with us humans, though you wouldn’t know it to look at them most a’ the time. Ranches and stores are passed father to son, momma to girl, but there ain’t no room for it. Son tries to run things like he wants, father ain’t having none of it, they start feuding and soon that family ain’t no more.

The book begins with a bang!The book begins with a bang! The first chapter shows Elka confronting Trapper, which is actually what the entire story leads up to. Knowing some of the end events did not lessen the tension for me. The confrontation captured my attention immediately, but it holds so much more emotional weight once the whole story is revealed. Despite the knowledge of Trapper’s crimes, the relationship between him and Elka and her wide-eyed admiration of him is very sweet. (I never thought I would find a story about a salmon’s eye endearing!) The rest of the book details the events that led to the confrontation. After Elka goes on the run, it is impossible to shake the feeling that Trapper is lurking nearby. She battles unpredictable elements in the woods. While Elka is very resourceful in the wild, she’s naive when it comes to people. She spent a decade in an isolated cabin with Trapper, under strict instructions not to communicate with anyone. Despite her better instincts, she is a little too trusting at the beginning of her journey and gets into a few vulnerable situations. She also has the added stress of being chased by law enforcement, who think she is an accessory to Trapper’s crimes.
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Memories ain’t no one’s friend. They show you all the good things you had, all the good things you lost, and don’t let you forget all the bad shit in between

Elka spends much of the beginning surviving on her own, but she starts to interact with a wider variety of people about a third of the way through. My favorite part is when Penelope enters Elka’s life. Penelope is prissy and not made for living in the wild, but she has survival skills that Elka doesn’t: she can read, has medical knowledge, and is very beautiful. Elka has an adversarial attitude towards Penelope at first and is reluctant to befriend her, but a strong bond develops over time. Their differences make their interactions interesting and sometimes hilarious. I would love to read a book solely about them living in the woods together!

“Monsters ain’t real ’cept in kids’ imaginations, under the beds, in the closets. We live in a world a’ men and there ain’t no good come out of tellin’ them they monsters. Makes ’em think they ain’t done nothing’ wrong, that it’s their nature and they can’t do nothin’ to change that. Callin’ ’em a monster makes ’em somethin’ different from the rest of us, but they ain’t. They just men, flesh and bone and blood. Bad’uns, truth, but men all the same…Nothin’ a man can do can make him stop bein’ a man.”

The Wolf Road explores the nature of evil as Elka comes to grips with the part she might have played in Trapper’s crimes. Elka learns that the past doesn’t have to doom your future and that maybe having a “pack” isn’t so bad. This book has a similar feel to The Dog Stars and Vengeance Road, so if you liked those books I definitely recommend you check this one out. It really quenched my thirst for danger and adventure! (Which I only want to experience from the comfort of my own living room!) There was never a dull moment and I was engaged from beginning to end. Elka is a captivating character that I will never forget.

Life is life and you got to live it in the here-now not the back then.

An excerpt is available on Penguin Random House’s website.

Since She Went Away by David Bell

Jenna Barton and her best friend Celia had plans to meet at a local park at midnight, but Jenna was delayed by an incident at home. When she arrives fifteen minutes late, Celia is nowhere to be found. Three months later, Celia is still missing. The only clue is a single diamond earring found at the park, inspiring the media to nickname Celia the “Diamond Mom.” While Jenna is struggling with immense guilt over her best friend’s disappearance, her fifteen-year-old son Jared is in the throes of first love with Tabitha, the mysterious new girl in town. Tabitha lives under unusually strict rules and is reluctant to discuss her family life. Tabitha abruptly disappears and Jared is heartbroken. Where is Celia? Is she alive or dead? Where is Tabitha and why is her father so overprotective?

She wanted something to end, something to conclude. And nothing seemed to be. Doors kept opening, leading to more long hallways and doors. She didn’t know where she was in all of it.

The story alternates between Jenna’s and Jared’s perspectives. Their storylines eventually become connected. One of my favorite parts of the book was the fickleness of the media. “The media giveth and the media taketh away.” Jenna becomes the target of a Nancy Grace type after she makes an important reporter angry. Jenna has been a regular presence in the media surrounding the case, but she tries to protect her son from the media circus. While Jenna is dealing with everything that comes with being close to tragedy, she is also dealing with the everyday struggles of being a single mom to a teenage boy. She tries to figure out how to communicate with her son without pushing him away and she frequently fails. Jared is an average teenager who just wants to be left alone. He is fixated on his new girlfriend.

We are all so vulnerable, she realized. We all dance on the knife’s edge. One push, and we are over. Even someone like Celia. The wrong place at the wrong time and you become a statistic, one of the many missing, their faces fading into the past with every day that went by.

The opening was really strong! Jenna is on the scene at a local barn where bones have been found and they are potentially Celia’s remains. The tension in that scene is palpable, but it dropped off substantially after Chapter 3. Overall, not much happened. Jenna drinks a little too much, spends time on sleuthing message boards, and reconnects with her missing best friend’s husband. Celia’s husband has a standoffish disposition and seems to be hiding something. Jared’s parts are more of a YA love story. Jared is extremely protective of Tabitha and creeps around the town trying to figure out her situation.

“We’re all kind of living in a swirl. It’s like one of those snow globes you have at Christmas. Except this is real, and it’s been shaken up and a bunch of bad stuff keeps blowing past our faces.”

Try to take meals four times every day. viagra generic brand This will increase how cheap generic cialis wide the penis is. However, Ultram is perfect generic levitra online for immediate relief. Meanwhile, you can review your cute-n-tiny.com levitra for sale online own liveliness in bedroom. I prefer suspense novels led by journalists or the police. I tend to get aggravated by civilians repeatedly involving themselves in cases and putting themselves in unnecessary danger. When Jenna and her son aren’t at home, they are both are constantly running off to question or confront suspicious people without informing anyone. Jenna is a hands-off parent. She gives Jared instructions, but she shrugs it off when he ignores them. She has an I-admire-his-spirit attitude about it all. Her passiveness made it difficult for me to be concerned about Jared when he repeatedly gets himself in dangerous situations. While I did care about the mother/son relationship, I didn’t care about their relationships with the outside characters. Jenna has a good friend/co-worker who basically just serves as a sounding board for Jenna. Tabitha barely speaks and her relationship with Jared is 99% lust, so I didn’t care about their intense connection and I wasn’t overly invested in her fate. We don’t get to know Celia and she sounds awful from what we do know, so I didn’t care much about her fate either. The ending is really abrupt. We find out what happened to Celia and Tabitha and then it just ends, no wind-down.

Jenna placed her head in her hands. She wished she could remain in that position long enough–not looking, not seeing–that the problems around her would be resolved in some favorable and benevolent manner. But she knew they wouldn’t be. She wasn’t a little kid who could play hide-and-seek until somebody else–somebody older and more capable–shouted the all-clear.
It was her life. The swirl around her belonged to her.

Even when I feel ‘meh’ about a suspense novel, I usually still enjoy them while I reading them. Since She Went Away wasn’t super memorable, but it was an entertaining way to spend a few hours. I would read another David Bell book on a lazy afternoon.

People drove or walked by places where unspeakable and awful events happened all the time. A spot where someone dropped dead of a heart attack. A place where one lover told another he or she was leaving. Those spots weren’t marked. Nobody knew. Life went on.

Before the Fall by Noah Hawley

Plane crash mystery with bigger ideas. I had a blast reading Before the Fall! Plane crash + Martha’s Vineyard + wealthy people with secrets + critique on the 24-hour news cycle = a guaranteed winner for me.

“I don’t have to tell you how that’s going to look,” says Gus. Scott nods. “Since when does how a thing looks matter more than what it is?”

Sixteen minutes after takeoff, a private plane flying from Martha’s Vineyard to New York plunges into the ocean. Artist Scott Burroughs and four-year-old JJ Bateman are the only survivors. While Scott tries to make sense of his new life in the public eye, the authorities and the media try to piece together the mystery with no physical evidence. The plane hasn’t been found and Scott has very little memory of the incident. It might have been a case of pilot or mechanical error, but many of the adults on board were potentially the target of foul play or had motive to bring the plane down.

Once anointed a hero by your fellow man, you lose the right to privacy. You become an object, stripped of some unquantifiable humanity, as if you have won a cosmic lottery and woke one day to find yourself a minor deity. The Patron Saint of Good Luck. It stops mattering what you wanted for yourself. All that matters is the role you played in the lives of others. You are a rare butterfly held roughly at a right angle to the sun.

This book has one of my favorite openings ever! The beginning chapters are so thrilling, especially the scene directly after the plane crash. The story played before my eyes like a movie. I felt dread and urgency throughout the entire book, even though I already knew most of the character’s fates. The story unfolds more like it would in real life, rather than the typical mystery/thriller. The media tries to keep the story going, by nitpicking at every little detail and trying to find a ratings-winning angle. They quickly turn on Scott, who was initially seen as the hero. Scott attempts to hide from the media’s scrutiny, which is a suspicious act to many in the media. He forms a really sweet bond with JJ Bateman and that also raises their suspicions. Scott occasionally communicates with Gus Franklin, the NTSB agent in charge of the case and the most objective person in the book. There are other government agencies involved and each agency has tunnel vision about their pet theory. I really appreciated that the story stays focused on the crash and doesn’t get sidetracked by any unnecessary romances, especially since Scott is a single man.

Everyone has their path. The choices they’ve made. How any two people end up in the same place at the same time is a mystery. You get on an elevator with a dozen strangers. You ride a bus, wait in line for the bathroom. It happens every day. To try to predict the places we’ll go and the people we’ll meet would be pointless.

While a majority of the book is about the media handling of the case and Scott grappling with unwanted attention, the answers to the mystery are revealed via the character portraits interspersed throughout the chapters. (I don’t know if the print version has a table of contents, but avoid it if it does.) These profiles give some background on the passengers and details about their trail on the day of the crash. Even though we are only briefly acquainted with each character, I really cared about these people. I was hoping that somehow they would get a different ending. The passengers of the plane were:

The Bateman Family: 
• David, 56: Head of ALC News, a 24-hour news network with a point-of-view. Due to David Bateman’s high profile and controversial job, the Batemans receive constant threats.
• Maggie, 36: David’s wife and former teacher. She has been frustrated with David’s work schedule.
• Rachel, 9: Daughter. Was kidnapped and held hostage for a few days in July 2008.
• JJ, 4: Son.
• Gil Baruch, 48: Israeli ex-pat and head of the Bateman’s security for four years.

The Kiplings:
• Ben, 52: May have been under investigation by the SEC
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• Scott Burroughs, 47: Recently sober artist whose career might be on the cusp of something big after years of failure. Maggie invited him on the plane, raising suspicions that they may have been having an affair. He is protective of his bag when he boards. Coincidently, he has painted a series of disaster scenes, including one of a plane crash.

The Flight Crew:
• James Melody, 50: Experienced pilot. Raised in a doomsday cult.
• Charlie Busch, 30: The first officer. Nephew of a senator and a partier with a bit of a substance abuse problem.
• Emma Lightner, 25: Flight attendant. There is a weird vibe between her and Charlie.

To Netflix an episode of The Care Bears with your children, and then later that night (after the kids are in bed) search for amateur couples who’ve filmed themselves breaking the laws of several states. To video conference from your work computer with Jan and Michael from the Akron office (about the new time sheet protocols), then click (against your better instincts) on an embedded link to a jihadi beheading video. How do we separate these things in our brains when the experience of watching them—sitting or standing before the screen, perhaps eating a bowl of cereal, either alone or with others, but, in any case, always with part of us still rooted in our own daily slog (distracted by deadlines, trying to decide what to wear on a date later)—is the same?

The central media figure is Bill Cunningham, a popular and corrupt political commentator on ALC. “Mr. Straight Talk, Mr. Divine Righteousness, who sat in our living rooms and shared our pain, who told us what we wanted to hear, which was that the reason we were losing out in life was not that we were losers, but that someone was reaching into our pockets, our companies, our country and talking what was rightfully ours.” He is close to the Bateman family and was Rachel Bateman’s godfather. He plays on people’s emotions and he is convinced that Scott has something to do with the crash.

Discussion about the modern news media and the 24-hour news cycle fascinates me! Even though I don’t subscribe to cable, I can’t escape its influence. A majority of the televisions I encounter in waiting rooms, restaurants, and living rooms are set to a news network, primarily one specific major network. The content dominates conversations, usually mimicking the tone of the commentators. Before the Fall explores the tendency to forget that real people aren’t characters in a movie and the thin line between speculation and accepted fact. It also asks if the constant inundation of news in our daily lives is making it difficult to separate entertainment from reality. 

All he wants is to be left alone. Why should he be forced to clarify, to wade into the swamp of lies and try to correct these poisoned thoughts? Isn’t that what they want? For him to engage? To escalate the story? When Bill Cunningham invites him on the air, it is not to set the story straight so the story ends. It is to add a new chapter, a new twist that propels the narrative forward into another week of ratings cycles. A trap, in other words. They are setting a trap. And if he is smart he will continue to ignore them, move forward, live his life. As long as he doesn’t mind the fact that nobody on earth will ever see him as he sees himself again.

If this was a straight suspense novel, I think I would’ve been disappointed in the ending, but I thought the ending was appropriate in context of the greater message. With all the speculation about complex plots that took the plane down–Cunningham mentions ISIS at one point–I was fine with how the greater mystery was tied up. I was confused about how Scott showed a remarkable amount of clarity at the end, especially considering his state of mind during the rest of the book. It also ended really abruptly. I wanted to know what the fall-out after the last scene was! Of course, that’s how it happens in real life too; stories are promptly dropped after there are clear answers, especially if they don’t suit anyone’s agenda or incite any conflict.

Two things happen at the same time. By mentioning them together they become connected. Convergence. It’s one of those things that feels meaningful, but isn’t. At least he doesn’t think it is? How could it be? … How many millions of other activities begin and end at the same time? How many other “facts” converge in just the right way, creating symbolic connectivity?

Before the Fall is relevant and fast-paced. Highly recommended for anyone who is looking for commentary on modern life with a little bit of mystery.

The Language of Dying by Sarah Pinborough

An emotionally raw novella about caring for a dying parent, dysfunctional family relationships, and depression. This book is being rereleased on August 2, 2016.

There is a language to dying. It creeps like a shadow alongside the passing years and the taste of it hides in the corners of our mouths. It finds us whether we are sick or healthy. It is a secret hushed thing that lives in the whisper of the nurses’ skirts as they rustle up and down our stairs. They’ve taught me to face the language one syllable at a time, slowly creating an unwilling meaning.

As a woman sits beside her dying father’s bedside, she reflects on the events that shaped her dysfunctional family’s circumstances and the events that led her back to her childhood home. Caring for her father in his last months and the ups and downs of life have taken an enormous emotional toll on her, but she is the only one in her family who was up for the task. Spending time with her father during his final transition has given them a strong and unique bond. The tender way she cares for him is extremely touching. She refers to her father as “you,” so the book reads like she is writing him a letter. It feels deeply personal, like a memoir. The tone is melancholic. I really liked the concepts of time folding and “the drift” that reappear throughout the book.

Most things in life change gradually. Events creep up on you from behind just like the language. You barely notice the beginnings; it’s only when things go terribly wrong that we wipe the sleep from our eyes and wail miserably, ‘How the hell did that happen?’

The narrator has been alone in caring for her father after his cancer diagnosis. In his final days, the narrator’s four siblings return to the family home. The beginning of the putting-back-together before we fall apart. There have always been unofficial alliances between the siblings; the oldest two are only a year apart and have always had a special connection and the youngest two, twins, have their own unique bond. The narrator was always on her own, matched to her father due to circumstance.

The boys share a smile over something Penny has said and I can almost see their childish faces shimmering under the worn skin they have now. Only just, but the traces are still there. That makes me sadder than if they had been gone forever and I go to the sink and slowly wash up, hiding in the task.

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There is no laughter now, no tall tales, just a man who can’t deal with losing his father. Or maybe can’t deal with the process of losing his father. I wish he could get a glimpse of other people and see that they feel and think, just like he does. Maybe then he’d realise that none of us can deal with it. We just have to suck it up and get on with it.

As I expected from the gorgeous book cover and the Neil Gaiman blurb, there is a smidge of fantasy. During emotionally traumatic and transformative moments in her life, “special, terrible night[s],” the narrator sees a grotesque unicorn-type beast in the field outside of her home. It demands her attention and beckons her to follow. These moments quickly pass and are integrated seamlessly in the context of the events, so it shouldn’t prevent those that typically avoid fantasy from reading it.

Growing up is about realising that the cracks in the pavement are nothing to worry about. It’s the cracks inside that count.

At only 144 pages this is a very quick read, but it packs a strong emotional punch. It is filled with beautifully written passages. By the time I finished this book, I wanted to get my hands on everything Sarah Pinborough has ever written! If you enjoyed The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (atmosphere/reality + bit of fantasy) or A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (parent dying of cancer/reality + bit of fantasy), you will probably like this book. It also made me think back to the scenes concerning Levin’s brother’s fate in Anna Karenina.

This is just the end. It isn’t the everything of you. And it’s the everything we’ll remember when the memory of this fades. I remember me and Penny in the bath splashing bubbles, you smiling behind the camera. Or maybe I just remember the yellowy seventies photograph, but either way those things are the everything. All moments that have arrived here.