Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Cora's mother died in childbirth; at six she becomes the youngest of four orphans when a massive tornado kills their father and destroys their Oklahoma home. Tucker abandons his sisters and disappears, while Darlene sacrifices her dream of college to support her younger siblings. When Cora is nine, she's alone at their trailer when Tucker reappears, badly injured, and takes her with him on what turns out to be a deadly, cross-country ecoterrorist rampage. Geni (The Lighkeepers, 2016) extends her signature and deeply unnerving exploration of the permeable line between wildness and civilization in this teeth-gritting tale of a young man broken by grief and rage and a trusting child turned fugitive, a girl disguised as a boy whose identity is scrambled and life endangered. With searing intensity, Geni contrasts Tucker and Cora's grueling misadventures with Darlene's agony as she waits for news and her surprise to find herself in love with an investigating police officer. Geni's masterfully precise and harrowing depictions of emotional and physical suffering culminate in a surreal and catastrophic showdown involving a California zoo. In this staggering tale of loss intimate and ecological, Geni joins T. C. Boyle, Barbara Kingsolver, Annie Proulx, and Hannah Tinti in portraying humankind as both the planet's most dangerous predator and one of myriad species vulnerable to ecodisasters of our own unintended devising. Riveting, provocative, and unforgettable.--Donna Seaman Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Disasters both natural and personal are at the heart of Geni's bold and adventurous latest, following 2016's The Lightkeepers. Three years after a tornado devastates the Oklahoma town of Mercy-leaving sisters Darlene, Jane, and Cora orphaned and in poverty-a nearby cosmetics factory is bombed by animal rights activists. The bombing turns out to be the work of the girls' disappeared brother, Tucker, who abandoned the sisters after a storm took away their home and father. On the lam and badly injured, Tucker kidnaps nine-year-old Cora to help tend his wounds, and to witness his grand plan of destruction as he moves west and targets individuals and establishments that hurt animals. Cora is struck dumb with love for Tucker, whom she remembers only as a special presence, a remnant of her old life, but through her eyes readers can clearly see the cruelty and confusion behind his escalating actions. With Cora missing, tough Darlene works with a kind local cop to find her sister and end Tucker's reign of violence before it can hurt too many or corrupt Cora too irreversibly. While predictable, the novel is particularly notable for its interrogations of human relationships with the natural world, in keeping with Geni's previous works. This is a fast-paced, high-stakes novel that will keep the reader turning the pages. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In this acute and affecting follow-up to Geni's award-winning debut novel, The Lightkeepers, the McCloud family is devastated when a Category 5 hurricane savages Mercy, OK; the house and farm are flattened and the children orphaned, their father swept away by the winds. (Their mother had already died in childbirth.) Eldest Darlene abandons her college dreams to tend to sisters Jane and Cora and brother Tucker, who is angered by Darlene's desperate ploy to secure financial support and soon deserts his siblings in a rage. Three years later, the sisters are just scraping by when the cosmetics factory outside of town is bombed, releasing the lab animals, and Tucker arrives badly injured at the sisters' trailer. Only nine-year-old Cora is there, and Tucker takes her on a journey that is both a profound education in how animals suffer and an escalatingly violent rampage as he seeks to address the situation, all the while insisting that Cora masquerade as a little boy named Corey. Throughout, Geni enfolds multiple themes: how the well-intentioned can go horribly wrong, how childhood experiences shape us, and what family love really means and how it can vie with principle. VERDICT Revealing its secrets gradually and dealing gracefully with tough issues, Geni's work will satisfy a wide range of fiction readers.-Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal © Copyright 2018. 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
Geni's (The Lightkeepers, 2016) fascination with the borders between human and animal drives this distinctive sophomore novel.Darlene, Tucker, Jane, Cora: Already motherless, they are transformed in seconds into modern orphans when a massive tornado sweeps their small piece of the Oklahoma plains, disappearing their childhood home, their barn animals, and their father. More transformations await. Darlene, now a legal guardian, scrapes together a subsistence for the siblings instead of going to college. Their new life is sufficient for Jane and for Cora (whose memories extend no further back than the tornado) but is untenable for Tucker. He runs away to nurse a streak of wildness, becoming a dangerously zealous animal rights activist, returning to bomb a cosmetics factory close to home and releasing the bewildered test animals. And while the tornado is catalytic, catastrophe occurs when Tucker kidnaps 9-year-old Cora. He needs someone to tend his gruesome wounds from the bombing but seemingly desires a spiritual accomplice as well. Cora joins her big brother lovingly and willingly. On the lam, she sees more and more to make her uneasy; bombing is but one of the destructive crimes Tucker is willing to commit in the name of the animals. But Cora is enthralled by the fairy tale Tucker spins around their adventure and confused by the new identity Tucker has given her as a boy named Corey. Back home, Darlene's devastation is palpable, as are her anger, desperation, and strength of will. She and Jane find an ally in a local police officer, but their hope of finding Cora wanes along with the summer. Cora's experience, narrated in first-person chapters, is tender and terrifying. Tucker is almost exclusively viewed through her eyes, but readers can see the abhorrence of his actions clearly. At the same time, Geni uses him to limn the intelligence and order of the animal world and to raise valid, troubling questions about humans' treatment of their fellow beasts. Darlene, an impressive example of grit, provides a counterpoint. The question of the novel is what Cora will becomewhat any of us could becomewhen placed in the eyes of that storm.Geni continues to create works of art with perfect voices that are simultaneously thrillers and meditations on nature. It is an incredible trick. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
