Review by Booklist Review
It is the summer after high-school graduation and Mike Newlin is an average 18-year-old with a girlfriend, plans for college, and a summer job working on a farm. When his father disappears after killing his secretary, Mike's carefree life gradually spins out of control. No longer feeling he can make plans for the future, he struggles to get through each day, trying to help his mother start over again without a husband, ease his girlfriend's endless anxiety and worry, fend off the federal investigator who believes Mike knows more than he is letting on, and come to terms with what his father has done. As Mike begins a new life at college, his father makes contact, and Mike is forced to make a choice--either help his father or turn him in. With the desolate and unforgiving Black Hills of South Dakota as a backdrop, Troy tells a simple yet poignant story of ordinary people striving to overcome emotional and physical abandonment. --Carolyn Kubisz
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Narrowing her canvas from the mix of sassy, lovelorn protagonists in the praised West of Venus, but deepening her character portrayal and atmospheric mood, Troy has written a restrained but powerful coming-of-age story distinguished by a remarkable empathy for ordinary people caught in the crosshairs of tragedy. During the hot summer before Mike Newlin is to leave for college, his father, Glenn, a depressed social misfit and inadequate parent, kills his receptionist/lover and flees their small town of Wheatley, N.D. As she sensitively explores Mike's reaction to the event, Troy captures both the particular alienation of adolescence and Mike's own growing acknowledgment that he has inherited his father's defensive, untrusting, secretive personality. His feelings about his father's transgressive behavior are clouded by his own lust for Lee-Ann Schofield, the wife of the farm owner where he does chores, and his guilt in betraying his tender, vulnerable girlfriend, Donetta Rush. As his father's disappearance extends into the fall, Mike begins his freshman year at the university and falls into a classic depression. Troy plumbs Mike's emotional turmoil so deftly that the pace of this meditative novel never flags. Then she delivers another shock that adds adrenaline to the suspense of Glenn's eventual reappearance. By the time Mike sadly realizes that he must establish his own moral center, Troy has etched a memorable portrait of a family in crisis, a small town's reaction, and the classic human need for understanding and connection. Her main achievement, however, is to inhabit Mike so completely that his character flaws and emotional volatility are rendered with keen compassion. Moreover, each one of the supporting charactersÄfrom the conflicted Lee-Ann, who understands Mike all too well, to the poignantly openhearted Donetta, to Mike's bravely repressed mother, to the lonely detective who leads the search for Glenn, to a feral little woman who surfaces as Glenn's companionÄis drawn with a tolerance for human frailty. Like the Black Hills that represent the comfort of home to Mike, the novel encircles the reader in a believable world. Author tour. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Troy (West of Venus, LJ 5/1/97) presents a sensitive coming-of-age story. Mike Newlin has just graduated from high school in Wheatley, SD. He's spending the summer before college on the other side of the state hanging out with his girlfriend, working on a neighboring ranch, and lusting after his employer's wife. As if that isn't enough for a young man facing enormous change, life throws him a real curve: his father kills the receptionist at his insurance agency and vanishes. Mike's last "carefree summer" becomes one of re-evaluationÄof himself, his family, and his place in his community. Highly recommended for fiction collections.ÄDebbie Bogenschutz, Cincinnati State Technical & Community Coll. Lib. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by School Library Journal Review
YA-In this coming-of-age tale, a young man's ordinary life is jeopardized by a catastrophic event. During the summer before Mike Newlin is to begin college, his father, an insurance salesman, shoots and kills his receptionist and disappears. Mike is left to deal with his mother's distress, a clinging girlfriend, his yearnings for an older woman, a detective who insinuates himself into the family, and questions about his father. When the officer investigating the murder is convinced Mike's father will contact him after he arrives at college, the young man's stress intensifies. This well-paced story explores the teen's emotions as he gradually learns of his father's infidelities and flight through the western U.S. Young adults will be caught up in Troy's well-drawn characters as the protagonist navigates the minefield of relationships turned upside down because of a random event. Especially poignant are the scenes with his mother, his adoring girlfriend who, at first, he doesn't fully appreciate, and his infatuation with a 30-year-old married woman whom he comes to realize can never be more than a friend. Mike learns that the strings that connect families are not unbreakable and that the most valuable relationships are often those found elsewhere. Young adults will respect that hard-earned knowledge.-Pat Bangs, Fairfax County Public Library, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A terse, resonant exploration of the lingering impact of betrayal and violence. Mike Newlin has just graduated from high school and is restlessly waiting to go off to college when his father, who runs an insurance agency in their small South Dakota farming community, shoots and kills his secretary. It quickly becomes apparent that his father had for some time been having an affair with the much younger woman. Little by little, as a driven, idiosyncratic detective investigates, a new and unsuspected version of Mike's father comes to light, casting much of what Mike thinks he knows about him'and by implication much of what he thinks he knows about all those around him'into confusion. The plot may seem unsurprising at first, but Troy (West of Venus, 1997, etc.) manages to make it fresh and disturbing, thanks, in part, to her ear for the wry, unadorned speech of the West and to her keen eye for the small, modest gestures that reveal the fears and desires working within a character. Mike's mother, his girlfriend Donetta, and the close circle of family acquaintances are all gradually revealed to Mike as far more complex than he had realized. Troy also catches with great subtlety the intense struggle that Mike is plunged into by his father's betrayal. Shock, guilt, anger, confusion, and uncertainty follow one another in quick succession. Despite his grim determination to seal off his pain over his father's actions (and his longing to believe that somehow his father wasn't responsible), Mike begins to break down. He's unable to settle into college life. He's further unsettled by his mother's dignity, and by her ability to imagine a life without his father. The sudden appearance of his father, still on the run, and the revelations about his duplicities that follow, finally move Mike, sorrowfully, to act. A spare, haunting story about the conflicting claims of loyalty and truth, by an assured and highly original writer. (Author tour)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by School Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
