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Crooked River: A Novel
Author:
Geary, Valerie
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Class:
Fiction
Age: Adult
Language: English
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LC: PS3607.E
Print Run: 35000
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ISBN-13: 9780062326591
LCCN: 2014031348
Imprint: William Morrow
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Pub Date: 10/14/2014
Availability: Out of Stock Indefinitely
List: $25.99
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Hardcover
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Physical Description:
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326 pages ; 24 cm
H 9",
W 6",
D 1.09",
1.07 lbs.
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LC Series:
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Brodart Sources:
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Brodart's Insight Catalog: Adult
Brodart's TOP Adult Titles
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Bibliographies:
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Awards:
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Starred Reviews:
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TIPS Subjects:
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Suspense/Thriller
Psychological Fiction
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BISAC Subjects: |
FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense
FICTION / Coming of Age
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LC Subjects:
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FICTION / Coming of Age
FICTION / General
FICTION / Suspense
Families, Fiction
Grief, Fiction
Mothers, Death, Fiction
Murder, Investigation, Fiction
Oregon, Fiction
Psychological fiction
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SEARS Subjects: |
Criminal investigation, Fiction
Death, Fiction
Family life, Fiction
Grief, Fiction
Homicide, Fiction
Mothers, Fiction
Oregon, Fiction
Psychological fiction
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Reading Programs: |
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| Annotations |
| Brodart's TOP Adult Titles | 07/01/2014 |
| Sam McAlister and his little sister are still reeling from the sudden loss of their mother when their eccentric beekeeper father, Bear, moves them into a teepee in the middle of a rural Oregon meadow. When a young woman's body is found in Crooked River and Bear is accused of murder, Sam sets out to prove his father's innocence and save his fractured family. Debut Novel, 320pp., 35K, Auth res: Portland, OR |
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| Journal Reviews |
| BookPage | 10/01/2014 |
| One might describe Oregon as a melange of Haight-Ashbury, Appalachia and Yankee nouveau riche. Valerie Geary's first novel, Crooked River, follows this interplay between the state's radicals, rednecks and arrivistes. It begins when a journalist with the WASP-y name of Taylor Bellweather drowns. And the prime suspect is a beekeeper with a beard and a penchant for whiskey. The beekeeper is father to Sam and Ollie, girls mourning the recent death of their mother. Sam discovers the victim but fears that the police will implicate her father. The police implicate him anyway, because witnesses have him arguing with Taylor in a bar on the night of her disappearance. So Sam sets out like Nancy Drew to prove her father's innocence. Given the setting and the crime, Crooked River pays homage to Snow Falling on Cedars. But Geary is not one to labor over language. So while her novel is a swift and beguiling read, it sometimes resembles an episode of "Murder, She Wrote." Given that two youngsters are its narrators, it even flirts with the young adult genre. Not to say that Sam isn't a compelling character. She is finely drawn, an update on Harper Lee's Scout. When the local detective tells Sam that it's not her job to protect her father, Sam makes a fair bid to join the great orphans of literature. The problem with the back-to-nature ethos of the 1960s is that nature can be primal and nasty. The Summer of Love begat an Autumn of Discontent. Put another way, it's all fun and games until a girl named Taylor gets whacked. Geary isn't explicit about it, but her novel undoes some of the more recent idealizations of that grand Pacific Northwest state. It may, as the current motto goes, "love dreamers," but there's a dark earthiness to it still. Or as Sam says, "trees made better friends than people did.". Kenneth Champeon. 336p. BOOKPAGE, c2014. |
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| Booklist | 09/01/2014 |
| In her debut novel, Geary combines a straight-ahead thriller with a strong dose of the supernatural. Sam McAlister and her younger sister, Ollie, are in shock after the sudden death of their mother. Now residing with their emotionally fragile father, Bear, a beekeeper who lives in rural Oregon, they are facing a major adjustment. Ollie refuses to speak, although she can see ghosts she dubs the Shimmering, while feisty Sam is still stewing over the unfairness of life. Then their father, the quintessential outsider, is arrested for the murder of a newspaper reporter. The girls know their father is innocent and are determined to prove it, and their quest leads them to a mentally unstable sculptor and his dysfunctional family. Alternately narrated by the sisters, the novel is most successful when exploring the sisters' bond, now sorely tested by their circumstances, but is less successful on the supernatural front, which strains credulity. Still, the narrative skill displayed is impressive, and even skeptical readers will have a hard time putting this one down. Wilkinson, Joanne. 336p. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2014. |
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| Kirkus Reviews | 08/15/2014 |
| Two sisters growing up in rural Oregon find their world shaken when they stumble across a dead woman in the river that runs through their father's property. Ollie, who's 10, and 15-year-old Sam aren't just sisters--they're best friends, brought closer by their childhoods in a semifunctional family. After their father leaves, the girls' mom must raise them on her own. When their dad--nicknamed "Bear"--eventually resurfaces, he takes up living alone in the woods, where they see him infrequently. That is, until their mother dies of a heart attack and the sisters must move in with Bear and adapt to his crunchy nature-man lifestyle. His way of life is far from traditional, but the girls love it--he lives in a teepee in a meadow, with beekeeping as his primary source of income. The body the girls discover is at the center of the somewhat predictable mystery story that follows. The sisters, who alternately serve as narrators with very different voices (though Ollie is only 10, she reads as older), are increasingly consumed with solving the woman's bludgeoning death. Most townspeople don't seem surprised when Bear is fingered for the crime, though Sam and Ollie never believe their father is guilty. The girls spend the remainder of the novel trying to pinpoint the real criminal and save their dad from a jail sentence (which would leave them parentless). This is primarily a whodunit peppered with supernatural ghost talk (Ollie sees spirits she calls "The Shimmering," who follow her throughout the tale). Unfortunately, much of the paranormal subplot is tepid; Geary is a solid writer, though some of her phrasing can veer toward the overwrought, and some of the "country speak" she makes the characters engage in feels awkward. The book's core mystery is also disappointing--the identification of the dead woman's killer doesn't feel revelatory or surprising. A slightly jumbled debut that, while well-written, could have gone places it didn't quite manage to reach. 320pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2014. |
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| Library Journal | 07/01/2014 |
| Sam's mother has recently died and she's trying to hold on to some sense of normality after she and her selectively mute younger sister Ollie move to rural Oregon to live with their societal-dropout, tent-dwelling father. Sam is exhausted with trying to care for Ollie, who communicates by pointing at apt sentences in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The reader knows that Ollie is pursued everywhere by "shimmering" ghosts whose voices, she fears, will come out if she tries to talk. Then there's a murder that's close to home in every sense of the phrase, and Sam fears that all that is familiar to her, shaky though it is, will come asunder. Geary's debut novel, narrated in alternating chapters by the sisters, is more enigmatic than frightening, and the apparitions add a compelling twist to what's already an absorbing mystery. VERDICT This will appeal to those who enjoyed Wiley Cash's more literary A Land More Kind Than Home, as it will make the reader feel for the young protagonists who are buffeted by forces over which they have no control, and whose tenderness comes across in their care for each other and fear for their family. [See Prepub Alert, 4/14/14.]--Henrietta Verma, Library Journal. Henrietta Verma, Library Journal. 320p. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2014. |
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| Library Journal Prepub Alert | 04/14/2014 |
| After their mother dies, Sam McAlister and younger sister Ollie find themselves living in a teepee in rural Oregon with their father, Bear, a beekeeper and wide-eyed innocent. Then Bear is accused of killing the young woman whose body is found floating in a nearby creek. As Sam tries to clear his name, Ollie is informed by the Shimmering that's been following her since her mother's funeral-and the one now following Sam-that the girls are in danger. A debut that's loved in-house and will get a big book-club push; watch. 320p. LJ Prepub Alert Online Review. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2014. |
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