Review by New York Times Review
ENTROPY EATS AT Colliersville, Ind., the town at the center of Deborah E. Kennedy's moving first novel. Teenagers prowl the edges of a defunct theme park. Apartments crumble under poverty and neglect. The plot point that seems, at first, to connect the disparate people in this book is the disappearance of a girl: 5-year-old Daisy Gonzalez, who vanishes after school one late spring day when a tornado threatens - when cottonwood seeds float like "dry snow" and thunderheads make "knobby purple towers." Daisy's loss introduces us to a town where loss is already everywhere. But if Daisy provides the forward momentum that keeps the reader leaning in, turning pages, her disappearance is in no meaningful way what this novel is about. Much more than the mystery promised in its opening pages, "Tornado Weather" focuses on the volatile forces of class and race that entangle people and divide them. Each chapter follows different characters, and Kennedy expertly manipulates point of view to reveal the nodes in her complex, interlocking plotlines. We see the local dairy that is shut down for hiring illegal Mexican immigrants. We see the local boy who dies in Iraq, and the grocery store employee who hears animals speak but says little himself. In fact, the book's real hardware might be described as its network of secrets and silences. What characters can't or won't say to each other allows Kennedy to demonstrate the power of knowledge along with its equally powerful counterforce, ignorance. Some of this is the stuffof smalltown gossip, as when best friends fail to divulge what they know of the other's husband's infidelities. But Kennedy troubles these fissures in riskier and timelier ways. The forced intimacy of a town where "everybody knows everybody," or seems to, belies a fervently maintained system of bigotry and segregation. One thing most people in Colliersville do share is a sense of being stuck. "Get out and do more while you still can," the local hairdresser wants to urge Wally - or Willa - Yoder, the transitioning transgender teenager who helps in her shop. The name "Willa" invokes Cather's bleakly tender depictions of the Midwest, but I kept thinking of Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio" as I read, and the special brand of Midwestern claustrophobia felt by those who are trapped and unable to imagine any exit. "I'll never get out of here," another of Colliersville's teenagers thinks, "except in a body bag." Is it intentional, then, that when we follow two characters beyond Colliersville's borders, both transits involve tragedy? At the close of "Tornado Weather," a death facilitates a magical escape, which allows Kennedy to display a panoramic view of the town and its messy social - that is to say, human - striving. This late mystical development comes across as curiously wishful thinking in an otherwise cleareyed book, an oversimplification of problems we've come to know up close. The chaotic kaleidoscope of angry and idiosyncratic perspectives in the earlier chapters is more affecting. Though the book shows us trapped people in a declining town, there is nothing at all claustrophobic about a narrative that shifts its lenses continually and deliberately, playing with degrees of identification as it slides among more than a dozen viewpoints. When two enemies meet accidentally near the end, we see them mourning private griefs, and, having experienced so much, they part at last without rancor: "They knew too much now, of men and women and the world, to hate each other any longer." By the end of this well-crafted, humane and energetic novel, readers know too much of Kennedy's characters not to sympathize. EMILY FRIDLUND is the author of "History of Wolves."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 27, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
Kennedy's moving debut novel, about people living in small-town Indiana, reads like interconnected short stories as each chapter is told from a different character's perspective. The loose plot concerns a young girl who has gone missing, but the bigger story is of the town itself: a place where political issues play out on a personal stage. Longtime residents have lost their jobs to immigrants who are paid a pittance and forced to live in squalor. A teenage boy is in the midst of transitioning, while a local pastor shows films like Praying the Gay Away. Most characters are just trying to find their place in the world. Kennedy's writing is very good, and her dialogue rings true and keeps the storiesmoving. Though a pat ending loses some of the nuance found in the rest of the book, Kennedy has painted a distinctive picture of a Midwestern blue-collar town that will remind readers of Richard Russo's work. Fans of Did You Ever Have a Family (2015), by Bill Clegg, will also find much to admire.--Sexton, Kathy Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Kennedy's heartbreaking debut novel captures the warped and isolated landscape of today's American Midwest. Narrated by myriad characters whose voices swirl into a vortex that becomes, literally, a tornado, the story hangs ever so loosely on the disappearance of Daisy Gonzalez, daughter of a local schoolteacher in Colliersville, Ind., who was disabled in the hit-and-run that killed her mother three years prior. The owner of a dairy farm nearby has replaced all his workers with Mexican laborers, and tensions in the community run high. Colliersville has only one policeman, but many others in town feel responsible for the missing girl, and a search ensues. Hector, Daisy's devastated father, cannot teach, nor eat, nor fathom what has happened. Fikus, the bus driver who left Daisy alone on the street the day she disappeared, convinces his old workmate, Irv, a hermit roadkill collector, to help him search for clues. Wally, adult child of the dairy farm owner who works at the local hair salon and wants to be called Willa, has an opinion about Daisy's disappearance, but Trevor, who talks to animals, knows better. Though this story is hung on a child gone missing and a tornado on the horizon, the focus is the flawed folks who people it. The author is a fine mimic, inhabiting her characters in such a way that we know them from the inside out. The denouement, coming as it does from a surreal, bird's-eye view, is very strange indeed. Kennedy's superb chorus leaves an indelible impression. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
[DEBUT] In the small Indiana town of Colliersville, where residents struggle to make a living and prejudices still exist, five-year-old Daisy Gonzalez goes missing, and everyone has a theory as to what happened to her. Her father blames himself for not meeting her at the bus stop. Her friend blames himself for not following her home. Many believe the Seavers, the bad seeds of the town, are responsible. It could be that Colliersville's only policeman is right: the accident that killed Daisy's mother and left Daisy in a wheelchair is related to the girl's disappearance. The tornado forecast is not the only threat to finding the child; it is also the perfect storm that promises to uncover bad feelings and long-held misconceptions held by the town's inhabitants. Verdict Less about the mystery of Daisy's vanishing and more about living in a community where neighbors are strangers and secrets really aren't secret, Kennedy's debut novel is perfect for readers of Liane Moriarty, Lauren Groff, and Jojo Moyes.-Melissa Lockaby, Univ. of North Georgia Libs., Dahlonega © Copyright 2017. 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
Class, race, and natural disaster collide in this first novel.Five-year-old Daisy Gonzalez has gone missing. Her disappearance is a crisis for her father and a problem for the police. For just about everyone else in Colliersville, Indiana, it's a symbol of the town's decline. Although the question of what has happened to Daisy serves as a catalyst and a unifying conundrum, this is not a typical mystery novel. Instead, it reads more like a collection of connected short stories. Gordy is a journalist who's gone undercover to investigate conditions at the Yoder Dairy. That business itself is a flashpoint for conflicts both public and private. Helman Yoder's decision to expand operations and replace local workers with Mexican migrants has aggravated racial tensions in the community and given Colliersville's militia movementall two membersa renewed sense of purpose. It's also exacerbated Helman's wife Birdy's reliance on prescription painkillers. Renee Seaver doesn't necessarily have anything against Mexicans, but she's happy to use her father's antipathy if it will get Mr. Gonzalezher math teacher, her history teacher, and Daisy's fatheroff her back. Benny Bradenton is Renee's connection to the other side of Colliersville, where the (relatively) rich kids live. And then there's the storm.As Kennedy takes readers from the trailer park to the McMansions, from the laundromat to the psych ward, she brings this flailing Midwestern town to life. She creates a rich chorus of distinct and authentic voices. The sheer volume of characters becomes overwhelming, though, and not every character is fully developed. Wallyor WillaYoder is particularly problematic. It would not be surprising if the people of Colliersville had difficulty adjusting to a transitioning transgender teen, but it feels like the novel itself doesn't know quite what to do with this kid, and this confusion comes off as skepticism. A larger difficulty is that Daisy's disappearance starts to feel inessential and inconsequentiala self-indulgent hook rather than a necessary part of the narrative. The final chapter only reinforces this sense. A cacophonous debut. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
