{"id":299,"date":"2018-12-31T11:39:16","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T11:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=299"},"modified":"2018-12-31T11:39:16","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T11:39:16","slug":"lone-star-book-reviewsby-michelle-newby-nbcccontributing-editor-31","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=299","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Book ReviewsBy Michelle Newby, NBCCContributing Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span>Michelle Newby<\/span> is contributing editor at Lone Star Literary Life, reviewer for Foreword Reviews, freelance writer, member of the National Book Critics Circle, and blogger at www.TexasBookLover.com. Her reviews appear or are forthcoming in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, World Literature Today, South85 Journal, The Review Review, Concho River Review, Monkeybicycle, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, <\/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

Miles Arceneaux<\/span> is the storytelling alter ego of Texas-based writers Brent Douglass, John T. Davis <\/span>and James R. Dennis.<\/span> Miles was born many years ago among this group of old friends who penned, as a literary lark, the collectively-written novel Thin Slice of Life<\/span> \u2014 a book that has given birth to a series of witty Gulf Coast thrillers based on its central characters.<\/p>\n

ABOUT BRENT<\/p>\n

International businessman Brent Douglass writes in airports, hotel rooms, and drinking establishments around the world. At present he is a principal owner of KBC Networks and peddles data transmission equipment in Latin America and the Caribbean.<\/p>\n

ABOUT JOHN T.<\/p>\n

John T. Davis has been writing about the music, culture and personalities of Austin and the Southwest for more than thirty years for local, regional and national publications.<\/p>\n

ABOUT JAMES<\/p>\n

James R. Dennis, a Dominican friar, practices law in San Antonio and across Texas. He writes and teaches on spiritual matters and lives with his two ill-behaved dogs.<\/p>\n

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

\n

Fiction<\/p>\n

Miles Arceneaux<\/span><\/p>\n

North Beach<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Published by Miles Arceneaux (October 22, 2015)<\/p>\n

Paperback, 270 pages, ISBN 978-0996879712 (ebook also available)<\/p>\n

October 2015<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay . . . . What\u2019s the worst that could happen?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Johnny flashed me a quick smile and started the car. \u201cThe Sweetwater family motto.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/a><\/span>The triumvirate that is Miles Arceneaux<\/span> \u2014 Brent Douglass, John T. Davis, and James R. Dennis \u2014 are back with North Beach,<\/span><\/a><\/span> the fourth story about the Sweetwater clan in their series of crime novels that have been christened Gulf Coast noir.North Beach is a coming-of-age story of the next generation of Sweetwaters.<\/p>\n

With North Beach,<\/span> set in the summer of 1962, Arceneaux again proves masterful at evoking atmosphere and recreating a particular time and place. We are immersed in that year: the Space Race, Cuban Embargo, fallout shelters, the Beach Boys, paranoia, and virulent racism. North Beach<\/span> proves the truism that the more things change, the more they stay the same, as some of its historical elements remain relevant today.<\/p>\n

The story is told in the first person by Charlie Sweetwater, fifteen years old and consumed by fishing, boxing, football, cars, and girls. He and his older brother, Johnny, box at Stubby Hunsacker\u2019s gym in Corpus Christi. The trouble starts when Miami mobsters (\u201cthe Miami Chamber of Commerce\u201d) show up to poach Jesse Martel, a boxer from Cuba and Stubby\u2019s best fighter. As intimidation escalates to violence, Charlie and Johnny morph into a noir version of the Hardy Boys to save Jesse from the death penalty and themselves from street punks, corrupt cops, Castro operatives, and the CIA.<\/p>\n

Charlie experiences first love when he falls for Jesse\u2019s niece, the beautiful Carmen (\u201cshe looked like a figure you\u2019d mount on the prow of a ship\u201d), a ballerina from Cuba and an older woman (aged seventeen). Some of the most satisfying moments in North Beach occur when Charlie\u2019s fishermen-and-tavern-owning family culture collides with Carmen\u2019s salad-and-dessert-forks-classical-music family culture. The younger Sweetwaters are game for broadening their horizons and venture forth to appreciate Tchaikovsky as well as Duke Ellington and conjunto. North Beach is a very multicultural book.<\/p>\n

Arceneaux ably channels the teenage protagonists. The language is simple, suiting their ages, circumstances, and the era, while producing such humorous bons mots as these, describing a fish: \u201cIt was also absolutely the slimiest fish found in the Gulf Coast waters. Local anglers called them \u2018tourist trout.\u2019 We called \u2018em \u2018snot rockets.\u2019\u201d And this: \u201c\u2018Inboards and Outboards?\u2019 My uncle\u2019s catchy names for the ladies\u2019 and men\u2019s rooms.\u201d The sophisticated Carmen comments: \u201cSouth Texas is not exactly the center of the ballet universe. People around here think a jet\u00e9 is one of those long stone piers you build out into the water.\u201d<\/p>\n

North Beach<\/span> is uneven. There is a lot going on here \u2014 multiple storylines crowded by a large cast of characters. The pacing is sometimes slow, but the climax is exciting and the ending satisfying. Ultimately, North Beach<\/span> is about bullies in all their guises, personal and political, from the schoolyard to governments and everything in between.<\/p>\n

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

Michelle Newby is contributing editor at Lone Star Literary Life, reviewer for Foreword Reviews, freelance writer, member of the National Book Critics Circle, and blogger at www.TexasBookLover.com. Her reviews appear or are forthcoming in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, World Literature Today, South85 Journal, The Review Review, Concho River Review, Monkeybicycle, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, […]<\/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-299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299","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=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}