Thanks to Bethany House for the review copy.
Hunter's Moon is a tale of buried secrets and wounded lives. Novelist CJ Baxter is put back in touch with his family after years of separation by the death of his grandfather. Being back in the midst of the Baxter clan puts him face to face with the past he has tried to avoid. Coming back to New York and the Baxter family is at the same time a flight from marital troubles back in Tennessee, so CJ's life is in shambles. But in the weeks following his grandfather's funeral, the clouded issues of the past start to become clear. CJ's brother is running for the Senate and CJ, a bestselling novelist, is tapped by a magazine to write an article about his brother and his candidacy. This gives CJ a chance to delve more deeply into his brothers current dealings, as well as an occasion to work through their past. The fraternal conflict heightens as the novel advances, culminating in a hunt through the woods of New York where the hunted becomes the hunter.
Hoesel has written an interesting story of family conflict and estrangement. The prose carries the plot well, and the development of the main character carries the readers interest. CJ explores his recently found Christian faith in a way that works with the story, and while these themes come across clearly the book isn't preachy, which is definitely a strength. Overall, a good second offering from Hoesel.
This entertaining book
has been sitting on my to-be-reviewed shelf for months, so I'm going to satisfy myself with only this short notice. The book was entertaining, a thoughtful and surprising journey into what it means to be a Christian. It also serves as a fictional exploration of what it means to be a church. Stennett entertains (the story smacked of Fletch at points, with some nice humor) but also shows insight into today's evangelical culture. I look forward to reading more of his work.
In this fascinating collection of short stories, Grisham shows his characteristic flare for interesting characters and situations, as well as his ability to turn a plot on a legal storyline. The seven stories in this collection demonstrate a nice variety of characters and plot, some having tinges of a more traditional Grisham legal thriller and some having no legal theme at all. They are all held together, though, by their setting in Ford County, Mississippi, which readers will recall from books like A Time to Kill, The Last Juror, and The Summons. In all, I greatly enjoyed these seven tales. For me they evoked the feeling of Flannery O'Connor's grotesque southern fiction, especially evident in Grisham's colorful characters and sometimes nearly ridiculous encounters, though they always stay true enough to life to stay in the realm of the plausible. A few of these stories could easily have been the seeds of full-length novels, but all stood well as short stories. Though a departure from his usual format, these stories may be some of his best writing yet.
