Haley Herfurth

FictionLiterary Fiction

A family’s dark shadow

Review by Haley Herfurth

The central characters in The Daylight Marriage, Hannah and Lovell Hall, married young. She wanted stability; He wanted a chance at love. But as the years passed, resentments and unmet desires festered below the surface of their neat facade, creating a rift between the husband and wife that seemed insurmountable.

Always a beauty, Hannah grew up impulsive and spunky, a member of an upper-class family who took luxurious vacations and lived in mansions. Lovell, a climate scientist, was raised squarely in the middle class, in a home where emotions were more reserved and everything was practical. Despite their differences, the two try form a life together: Lovell works at his university job, which provides a distraction from his tenuous home life, and Hannah takes care of their two children, Janine and Ethan, and works a part-time job at a flower shop.

But after Hannah disappears the morning following an explosive argument with Lovell, questions arise not only from the community and the police but from within the family; Janine and Ethan grapple with the absence of their mother while also suspecting their father of involvement. While trying to deal with the intricacies of Hannah’s disappearance, Lovell must also attempt hold his loosely knit family together.

The Daylight Marriage is structured in two sets of chapters that alternate between Hannah’s and Lovell’s respective viewpoints, keeping the pages turning as the stories of love, loss, growth and grief progress.

Heidi Pitlor is a senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and published her first novel, The Birthdays, in 2006. She has been the series editor of The Best American Short Stories since 2007, and lives outside Boston with her husband and twin son and daughter. In The Daylight Marriage, she combines two distinct stories in one—a suspenseful crime narrative and the story of a failing relationship—to form a novel that captures readers from the first page on.

The central characters in The Daylight Marriage, Hannah and Lovell Hall, married young. She wanted stability; He wanted a chance at love. But as the years passed, resentments and unmet desires festered below the surface of their neat facade, creating a rift between the husband and wife that seemed insurmountable.
FictionHistorical Fiction

Into uncharted America

Review by Haley Herfurth

Young William Wyeth sets out from St. Louis as part of a fur-trapping brigade in 1826, hoping to prove to his family back East that his wandering, capricious nature can be put to good use. Wrestling with his insecurities spurs him forward into the relatively uncharted land west of the settled United States, filled with wild game, angry natives and endless potential.

On his first trapping trip, Wyeth nearly loses his life in a hunting accident. While healing at a nearby military fort, he falls in love with a newly widowed woman named Alene. As he prepares for a second trip west as part of a new brigade, he promises Alene he will marry her upon his return. However, he knows any number of things may keep him from fulfilling his commitment.

The mythology of the early American West is often monopolized by dramatic battles between cowboys and Native Americans, but Into the Savage Country approaches the era from a more somber angle. From horse races to buffalo hunts, Wyeth encounters much danger over his expedition, relying on friends in his brigade and a certain amount of good fortune to help him in his quest to return to St. Louis a rich man. Along the way, he discovers he misjudged many of his comrades, and as he begins to appreciate what they bring to the group, he forms friendships that are crucial to surviving the harshness of the unsettled West.

Tennessee-based writer Shannon Burke is the author of two novels, Safelight and Black Flies, and has worked on numerous film projects, including Syriana. Burke’s choice to write Into the Savage Country from Wyeth’s first-person perspective lends a realism to the historical, yet fictional account of his adventures, and his descriptions of the scenery and the native peoples encountered on his travels are striking. It’s a fresh take on the Western story.

Young William Wyeth sets out from St. Louis as part of a fur-trapping brigade in 1826, hoping to prove to his family back East that his wandering, capricious nature can be put to good use. Wrestling with his insecurities spurs him forward into the relatively uncharted land west of the settled United States, filled with wild game, angry natives and endless potential.
FictionHistorical Fiction

A house of secrets

Review by Haley Herfurth

When 22-year-old Alice becomes pregnant out of wedlock in the early 1930s, both she and her family fear disgrace. Her mother sends her from London to the Gloucestershire countryside to await the baby’s birth at a place called Fiercombe Manor, after which she will give the baby to an orphanage. Her mother’s old friend, Mrs. Jelphs, is the housekeeper at the empty manor, and she promises to keep watch over Alice, who has concocted a cover story of a recently deceased husband.

The house’s owners, the Stantons, live abroad, so Alice spends the sweltering summer mostly alone, accompanied by a feeling that something is amiss with the manor and its history. She becomes determined to seek out the secrets of the manor’s past and discovers that, 30 years ago, another pregnant woman suffered a tragedy on the estate. As Alice uncovers Elizabeth’s story, she fears that she, too, will share her fate. Weaving together Alice’s and Elizabeth’s stories, Fiercombe Manor ties together two women who, despite their different statuses and eras, are connected in many ways.

British writer and journalist Kate Riordan has worked for the Guardian, and her debut novel, Birdcage Walk, was based on a real-life crime in 1900s London. Her rich language pulls readers in, giving them a glimpse of the idyllic English countryside, its inhabitants and its secrets. Fiercombe Manor is fierce, imaginative and suspenseful.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

When 22-year-old Alice becomes pregnant out of wedlock in the early 1930s, both she and her family fear disgrace. Her mother sends her from London to the Gloucestershire countryside to await the baby’s birth at a place called Fiercombe Manor, after which she will give the baby to an orphanage. Her mother’s old friend, Mrs. Jelphs, is the housekeeper at the empty manor, and she promises to keep watch over Alice, who has concocted a cover story of a recently deceased husband.
FictionHistorical Fiction

Friendship in a time of change

Review by Haley Herfurth

Pre-Civil Rights Mississippi was a place where issues of race and class weighted down air already heavy with humidity. Jonathan Odell takes this complicated setting and throws two young mothers from widely different worlds together.

Hazel, a wealthy white woman, and Vida, a poor black woman, are at first only joined by the devastating loss of their children—and their enmity for one another. Vida is frequently harassed by the racist local sheriff, which, combined with the loss of her son, has made her bitter and mistrustful. When Hazel’s husband hires Vida to take care of Hazel after a drunken car crash, close proximity and lack of other companionship force Vida and Hazel to learn to get along. The two team up to turn their town of Delphi, Mississippi, on its head, and watch as change takes place—in their city, their state, their nation and their culture.

This is the third novel from Mississippi native Odell (The Healing), and it draws from his own experience. Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League is quintessentially Southern in its frank discussions of friendship, marriage, family, feminism, grief and redemption.

 

This article was originally published in the February 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Pre-Civil Rights Mississippi was a place where issues of race and class weighted down air already heavy with humidity. Jonathan Odell takes this complicated setting and throws two young mothers from widely different worlds together.
FictionWorld FictionDebut Fiction

Joining a new community—and feeling the chill

Review by Haley Herfurth

When Maija, her husband Paavo, and her daughters, Frederika and Dorotea, pack up their lives in Finland and head west to the Swedish Lapland in 1717, they were hoping for a fresh start, a clean break from the losses and the disappointments in their homeland. The land they find there is something like life, harsh but beautiful, and so they begin to make a new path for themselves in the shadow of the Blackåsen Mountain.

When Frederika and Dorotea discover the dead body of a neighbor, the fragile idea of stability in their new home begins to evaporate. 

When Frederika and Dorotea discover the dead body of a neighbor, the fragile idea of stability in their new home begins to evaporate. Deemed a wolf attack by the group of suspiciously unconcerned villagers, concern about the true happenings falls to Maija, who believes the man was murdered. While investigating his death, Maija immerses herself in the dark history of Blackåsen, full of tragedy and betrayal, while the winter cold becomes even more bitter.

The village sees a “wolf winter,” the harshest winter in memory, and as it descends, Frederika senses a call from the mountain, a pull toward it, a feeling no one else seems to experience or understand. The town bands together in an effort to survive, but with the close quarters comes exposure of secrets, and Maija and her family discover the true cost of a winter at Blackåsen.

Cecilia Ekbäck is a native of Sweden; her parents are from Lapland. She now lives in Calgary with her husband and twin daughters, but in her debut she returns to the landscape and characters of her childhood, clothing her memories in a suspenseful, Gothic fiction that will leave readers hanging on every word. Wolf Winter is a tale of moving and of staying put, of forgetting and remembering, of fear and family and nature.

 

When Maija, her husband Paavo, and her daughters, Frederika and Dorotea, pack up their lives in Finland and head west to the Swedish Lapland in 1717, they were hoping for a fresh start, a clean break from the losses and the disappointments in their homeland.

FictionHistorical Fiction

A reporter digs for the truth after a medium’s murder

Review by Haley Herfurth

The Civil War has been over for five years, but half a decade is not enough time to rid America of the demons the war left behind. Postbellum Philadelphia is populated by families mourning their lost sons, and streets full of men with missing limbs serves as a reminder that time does not heal all wounds. Such is the backdrop for Alan Finn’s Things Half in Shadow, full of spellbinding tales of the supernatural.

The novel is told from the point of view of Edward Clark, now a reporter for one of the city’s largest papers. He is still haunted by the things he saw while fighting in the war, by nightmares of friends whose lives he saw fade amidst cannon fire and smoke. The years have also not brought reprieve from a tragedy he witnessed as a child: The murder of his mother at the hands of his father, famed magician Magellan Holmes.

Because of Edward’s experience with illusion and deceit, thanks to his childhood with Magellan, he is asked by his editor to work on a story exposing the many mediums seeking to make money by reconnecting families with their lost loved ones on the other side. When the city’s most prominent (and perhaps legitimate) medium, Lenora Grimes Pastor, dies mid-seance, Edward must join forces with fake medium, the widowed Lucy Collins, to find her murderer.

Alan Finn is a pseudonym for an acclaimed author of mystery and crime fiction. He resides in Pennsylvania, the state in which his debut novel is set. Things Half in Shadow couples historical detail with imagination and fantasy. The author’s writing style is simplistic but not simple, allowing readers to fill in the blanks as they remain thrilled, intrigued and captivated with every turn of the page.

 

The Civil War has been over for five years, but half a decade is not enough time to rid America of the demons the war left behind. Postbellum Philadelphia is populated by families mourning their lost sons, and streets full of men with missing limbs serves as a reminder that time does not heal all wounds. Such is the backdrop for Alan Finn’s Things Half in Shadow, full of spellbinding tales of the supernatural.
FictionHistorical Fiction

On the fringe of American history

Review by Haley Herfurth

Set in the 1800s, Citizens Creek chronicles two different lives in its two parallel sections: those of Cow Tom, a slave born in Alabama and sold to a Creek Indian chief prior to his 10th birthday, and his granddaughter, Rose.

Cow Tom possessed many unique gifts. As a healer and expert in keeping cattle healthy, he became a kind of cow-whisperer as he grew, a trait that later manifested itself in the ability to master all kinds of languages. Armed with dreams of freeing himself, his wife and their two young daughters and establishing themselves in the Creek Tribe, Cow Tom must navigate working as a translator for the U.S. military and traveling the Trail of Tears, among other trials.

Following in Cow Tom’s footsteps is his granddaughter Rose, who, in her efforts to lead the family, becomes the matriarch and guardian of his legacy. As she tries to ensure her family is provided for and grapples with love, motherhood, political and social hostility, Rose proves her story is timeless.

Set against a vibrant backdrop of American expansion, black emancipation and the displacement of Native-American nations, Citizens Creek is a story of identity, community, family and an individual’s will to make a difference.

California-born Lalita Tademy is the author of Cane River, a best-selling novel and a 2001 Oprah Book Club Selection, and its critically acclaimed sequel, Red River. Here, she uses frank, descriptive prose that teems with life as it depicts Cow Tom’s travels and Rose’s trials and triumphs. Some books hold whole worlds between their pages—Citizens Creek is one of them.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Set in the 1800s, Citizens Creek chronicles two different lives in its two parallel sections: those of Cow Tom, a slave born in Alabama and sold to a Creek Indian chief prior to his 10th birthday, and his granddaughter, Rose.
FictionDebut Fiction

A question of morality

Review by Haley Herfurth

When Valentine Millimaki, a troubled young sheriff’s deputy, begins spending long hours at the county jail talking from opposite sides of prison bars with a career killer, he doesn’t expect to see a reflection of himself in the murderer’s own complicated past. At 77, John Gload has spent a lifetime working as a gun-for-hire, and is so adept at his craft that he is only now facing the prospect of a prison sentence. Millimaki is an underling in the Copper County sheriff’s department, whose marriage was splintering even before he drew the night shift. The unlikely pair develop a friendship that takes an unexpected turn as an act of violence leaves the two tied together by the secrets they share and the rugged country they love.

It would be too simple to say The Ploughmen centers on the idea of good and evil; it is not so black and white as that. The story is perpetually gray, with pockets of light and dark, not just in its morality but in its scenery. Despite their obvious differences, Millimaki and Gload share a kind of nostalgia for a past Montana, and their futures are connected by their choices.

Zupan is a native Montanan who for 25 years made a living as a carpenter while pursuing his writing. In The Ploughmen, he uses cadence and rich language to pull readers through the narrative, and despite a tendency toward long sentences, he writes with a kind of straightforwardness reminiscent of Kerouac. This memorable debut is at times strikingly beautiful, while at others quite bleak, but it is always poignant.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

When Valentine Millimaki, a troubled young sheriff’s deputy, begins spending long hours at the county jail talking from opposite sides of prison bars with a career killer, he doesn’t expect to see a reflection of himself in the murderer’s own complicated past. At 77, John Gload has spent a lifetime working as a gun-for-hire, and is so adept at his craft that he is only now facing the prospect of a prison sentence. Millimaki is an underling in the Copper County sheriff’s department, whose marriage was splintering even before he drew the night shift. The unlikely pair develop a friendship that takes an unexpected turn as an act of violence leaves the two tied together by the secrets they share and the rugged country they love.
FictionDebut Fiction

The Story of Land and Sea

Review by Haley Herfurth

The Story of Land and Sea follows three generations of a Revolutionary-era family struggling with life and death, freedom and slavery as they make a life in a small coastal town in North Carolina. Ten-year-old Tabitha is enthralled by her father’s stories of the sea and of his elopement aboard ship with her mother, Helen, whom she never knew. John gave up the sea when Tabitha was born and Helen died, returning to it only when he feels his last hope lies in the healing salt air.

Helen was raised by her own widowed father, Asa, who taught the girl to run their plantation. He bought her a servant girl, Moll, and the two girls grew up as close to friends as a master and her slave can be. But when Helen met John, the pirate-turned-Continental soldier, and fell in love, Asa watched her restraint melt away. Moll, on the other hand, is married against her will to a virtual stranger, but finds solace in her first son, Davy, whom she swears to protect from the hardships of the world.

Though John and Asa share the same losses, they find themselves continuously at odds, each wanting the other to forgive him for unspoken sins. John, whose truest happiness in life was borne on the waves, leaves the sea behind to deal with his grief. Asa, who has resented the sea since it returned to him a daughter who would die soon after, restores a small boat and teaches himself to row, seeking the solace of the salt water that Helen had found years before.

Still only in her 20s, New -Orleans-based Smith received a Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before earning her MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminar. The Story of Land and Sea is a striking debut novel that reads like poetry and will linger like mythology, as Simpson’s language and metaphors weave threads of magic through each sentence.

 

This article was originally published in the September 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The Story of Land and Sea follows three generations of a Revolutionary-era family struggling with life and death, freedom and slavery as they make a life in a small coastal town in North Carolina. Ten-year-old Tabitha is enthralled by her father’s stories of the sea…
Science Fiction & FantasyFictionFantasy

One strange and sweltering English summer

Review by Haley Herfurth

In the summer of 1976, 19-year-old David Barwise takes a job at a holiday resort in the seaside town of Skegness, England, hoping to avoid spending the summer with his mother and stepfather. But there is something more sinister underlying David’s reasoning: The beach resort is where his biological father died 15 years earlier, and David feels strangely drawn to the area, despite the tension it causes within his family.

The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit is a startlingly clear tale of a blistering English holiday season, the hottest in English history. The seasonal staff, made up of eccentrics and show people, accepts David into the fold—even hulking, ill-tempered resort employee Colin, with whom David develops an interesting relationship. His days are filled with organizing treasure hunts, setting up talent shows and judging sandcastle contests, and his nights are spent restlessly attempting sleep as he grapples with the odd feelings that being at Skegness brings. As David attempts to navigate the social structure of the resort staff, he becomes entangled in political movements and love triangles, both forbidden and dangerous. Meanwhile, swarms of ladybugs plague the town, and his attempts at building a life in Skegness are haunted by sinister and troubling visions of a man in a blue suit who wanders the beach, grasping a rope and an unidentifiable young child.

Graham Joyce’s fiction has earned him the O. Henry Award, the British Fantasy Award and the World Fantasy Award, and praise from horror and fantasy-genre greats like Peter Straub and Stephen King. In The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit, Joyce weaves a bizarre, colorful story, full of nostalgia, indecision, emotion and tension, and this genre-spanning novel is sure to be a favorite of fantasy, suspense and thriller fans.

 

This article was originally published in the August 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In the summer of 1976, 19-year-old David Barwise takes a job at a holiday resort in the seaside town of Skegness, England, hoping to avoid spending the summer with his mother and stepfather. But there is something more sinister underlying David’s reasoning: The beach resort is where his biological father died 15 years earlier, and David feels strangely drawn to the area, despite the tension it causes within his family.

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