{"id":1263,"date":"2018-12-31T16:28:56","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T16:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1263"},"modified":"2018-12-31T16:28:56","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T16:28:56","slug":"lone-star-book-reviewsby-michelle-newby-nbcccontributing-editor-133","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1263","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Book ReviewsBy Michelle Newby, NBCCContributing Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span>Michelle Newby<\/span> is a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews<\/span> and Foreword Reviews, <\/span>writer, blogger at TexasBookLover.com, member of the Permian Basin Writers’ Workshop advisory committee, and a moderator for the Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, Concho River Review, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, The Rumpus, PANK Magazine,<\/span> and The Collagist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lone Star Book Reviews
of Texas books appear weekly
at LoneStarLiterary.com<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n
\n
\n

ABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/span><\/p>\n

Eryk Pruitt <\/span>is a screenwriter, author, and filmmaker. He wrote and produced the short film Foodie,<\/span> which went on to win eight top awards at over sixteen film festivals. His short fiction has appeared in the Avalon Literary Review, Thuglit, Pulp Modern,<\/span> and Zymbol, <\/span>among others, and he was a finalist for the Derringer Award. He is the author of the novels Dirtbags<\/span> and Hashtag.<\/span> He is the host of the monthly radio show and podcast: The Crime Scene with Eryk Pruitt. He lives in Durham, NC, with his wife Lana and their cat Busey. Follow him at @ReverendEryk.<\/p>\n

www.erykpruitt.com<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

MYSTERY\/SUSPENSE<\/p>\n

Eryk Pruitt<\/span><\/p>\n

What We Reckon<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Polis Books<\/p>\n

Paperback, 978-1-9438-1864-8, (also available as an e-book), 320 pgs., $15.95<\/p>\n

October 10, 2017<\/p>\n

reckon:<\/span> 1. to settle accounts; 2. to make a calculation 3. a. judge, b. chiefly dialectal: suppose, think; 4. to accept something as certain: place reliance\u2014Merriam-Webster Online<\/p>\n

Jack Jordan (aka Grant, Keith, Hux, Andrew, ?) and Summer Ashton (aka Jasmine, Stormy, Christy, Autumn, Katrina, ?)<\/span> are on the run from South Carolina to East Texas with a stolen kilo of cocaine hidden in a hollowed-out King James Bible. Lifelong grifters, they wash up in Lufkin, Texas, with new identities and old habits. Jack and Summer soon establish their trade, picking up product in Houston and selling it to university students in Nacogdoches. All is well (more or less) until Jack falls for a co-ed, declaring that he\u2019s going straight (and he means it this time), leaving Summer to her abandonment issues and psychedelic therapy.<\/p>\n

Rules of the road: \u201cNever contact anyone from the past. Let sleeping dogs lie.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Summer, in desperation and an altered state, wakes a South Carolina pit bull, and someone is gonna die, someone is gonna have a near-death experience, someone is gonna check into a sober camp, and someone is gonna rise from the dead, all \u201cdue to [an] avalanche of psychological hoodoo.\u201d<\/p>\n

What We Reckon<\/span> is the third novel from award-winning screenwriter, author, and filmmaker Eryk Pruitt,<\/span> whose short story \u201cKnockout\u201d was a finalist for the Derringer Award. What We Reckon<\/span> is East Texas noir with elements of farce, a wild ride both disturbing and disturbed, as if Larry Brown<\/span> climbed into that contraption in The Fly, but instead of an insect getting spliced with Brown, it was Carl Hiaasen.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pruitt\u2019s codependent antihero and -heroine are indiscriminate junkies, hard to like but easy to appreciate. Jack, who appears to suffer neurological damage and anxiety attacks from too many (or not enough, depending) substances, is pure con man with no redeeming qualities. Summer remains a child at heart\u2014proud and confident one moment, vaguely suicidal the next\u2014a restless chameleon with a gift for reading people, longing for a home, fearing Jack will shed her unceremoniously one day without warning. Summer\u2019s the smarter of the two, but she\u2019s got voices in her head that aren\u2019t always her own. They are each equally dangerous, to each other and anyone who gets too close, exerting gravity like a charismatic black hole.<\/p>\n

What We Reckon<\/span> is fast-paced and twisty, sometimes archly humorous (as when a friend \u201ccommenced a melee upon their counterpart\u201d), frequently laugh-aloud funny (as when they heard knocking at the front door \u201cwhere only came cops and pizza delivery guys and hey, didn\u2019t nobody order a pizza, but before Jack could say a word, the population increased by five and one giant German shepherd\u201d), with smart, sharp dialogue which makes me imagine \u201cThe West Wing\u201d with Charlie Sheen instead of Martin:<\/p>\n

Donnie called, \u201cDid none of you try CPR?\u201d
\u201cWe prayed and prayed,\u201d said Suzie
\u201cThat\u2019s all you can do,\u201d Barney assured them.
\u201cIt literally isn\u2019t,\u201d said Donnie.<\/p>\n

Pruitt is also capable of curiously moving pathos, as when Summer recites the things only Jack knows about her. Pruitt possesses a distinctive style, playing with cadence and word order (as when Summer decides to \u201cfocus her attention on fields of greener pasture\u201d).<\/p>\n

What We Reckon<\/span> is by turns horrifying and bemusing, but always entertaining. The resolution is unexpected, strangely elegant and comforting. And somehow the whole package puts me in mind of O Brother, Where Art Thou?<\/span><\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michelle Newby is a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews and Foreword Reviews, writer, blogger at TexasBookLover.com, member of the Permian Basin Writers’ Workshop advisory committee, and a moderator for the Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, Concho River Review, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, The Rumpus, PANK Magazine, and The Collagist. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1263\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}