{"id":922,"date":"2018-12-31T14:42:06","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T14:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=922"},"modified":"2018-12-31T14:42:06","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T14:42:06","slug":"lone-star-book-reviewsby-michelle-newby-nbcccontributing-editor-94","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=922","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

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/a><\/span>MYSTERY\/SUSPENSE<\/p>\n

Eliza Maxwell<\/span><\/p>\n

The Grave Tender<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Lake Union Publishing<\/p>\n

E-book, 978-1-5053-5334-3, (also available in paperback, and on Audible), 248 pgs., $14.95<\/p>\n

April 11, 2017<\/p>\n

Young widow and mother Hadley Dixon <\/span>discovers her three-year-old son, Charlie, missing from their farmhouse next to the Neches River in East Texas. Though Charlie is found safe and sound in short order, the traumatic incident serves as a catalyst for Hadley\u2019s deep dive into family secrets. \u201cIt was the sins of her family, and her own, that had come home to roost,\u201d Hadley thinks. \u201cHuge hook-beaked birds that fed on carrion. They\u2019d taken her son, then brought him back. To show they could.\u201d<\/p>\n

I would add The Grave Tender<\/span><\/a><\/span> by Eliza Maxwell<\/span> to the growing subgenre I call East Texas Gothic, but I think you need a supernatural element for true East Texas Gothic\u2014preferably a witch. But Maxwell hits the other requirements, especially the primordial, haunted landscape that bears witness. \u201cWhen Jude spoke, her words circled around them in their wooded cocoon,\u201d Maxwell writes, \u201cand Hadley tried to shake off the sensation that the living things around them were all pieces of a whole. That the woods were listening, judging their worthiness to continue on this path.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Grave Tender<\/span> intrigues with its cover\u2014an image of a young woman seen from behind, the picture of innocence in a light pink cardigan as she faces a forbidding wood. The novel delivers on the cover\u2019s insinuations. The Grave Tender<\/span> is atmospheric and fast-paced, packing plenty of twists, and is unrelentingly dark. Even so, there\u2019s not a lot of foreshadowing; Maxwell will sneak up on you with a matter-of-fact delivery as she manages to stay just this side of melodrama.<\/p>\n

Maxwell\u2019s characters are well developed, especially Hadley\u2019s best friend Jude, who possesses a unique voice; as soon as Jude\u2019s dialogue begins we know who\u2019s talking. She provides the only comic relief. Here the child Jude is attempting to name a dog she and Hadley have found injured in the road: \u201cI think we should call her Lucky, but Hadley says she wasn\u2019t very lucky when that car hit her, unless bad luck counts,\u201d Jude breathlessly recounts. \u201cBut Bad Lucky isn\u2019t a very good name for a dog.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another standout character is Uncle Eli, a Boo Radley sort, who lives in the woods hiding his scarred face from the world in a shack which \u201ccould have sprouted out of the east Texas riverbank soil, fertilized by pine needles and motor oil,\u201d Maxwell writes, \u201craised with loving, calloused hands by trailer park mothers who smelled like cinnamon and menthol cigarettes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Precise word choices are evident as Maxwell turns a phrase, as in this description of the child Hadley: \u201cNext to Jude, with her gold-dust skin, Hadley looked like a coloring page that someone had forgotten to color in.\u201d When the young artist Hadley is introduced to painting, she marvels at the names of the paint colors: \u201cVermilion, burnt umber, ultramarine. Even the words felt exotic. Elegant, like red, orange, and blue, but all grown up and dressed for the opera.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Grave Tender<\/span> is about the the ways we fail each other as parents, siblings, and friends, the choices we make when we think we are doing the best we can, and the power and necessity of female friendship. Told in a series of flashbacks by multiple generations of women, The Grave Tender<\/span> is dark psychological suspense that skillfully inspires a slow-dawning dread.\u00a0 It will shred you.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\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-922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922","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=922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}