A Brother's Blood: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Great story, underdeveloped characters
Review: I enjoyed this novel very much and was surprised at how much I liked it. After reading several Tom Clancy/James Patterson novels, this was a welcome break: A quiet, thoughtful novel that centers around two related mysterious deaths. Perhaps my interest in the book was colored by the fact that I have visited almost all of the places mentioned in the book and even spent a night camping on the site of an old WWII German POW camp in Maine. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a good novel.

Rating:
Summary: The woods are dark and deep
Review: I liked this novel although I don't give it great marks because I thought it was a little implausible and the working out of the plot was too mechanical. It didn't have the effortless flow of a great novel. But the atmosphere was excellent and the backwoods Maine characters (reminiscent of a kindler, gentler Deliverance) were well portrayed.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful human drama
Review: I loved this story which centers on the many human connections that play an integral part in our lives. The relationship between Libby and Leon with flashbacks to their troubled childhood in rural WWII era Maine and were extremely well done.I felt like I really knew the characthers and felt the bond they shared. As the very interesting story unfolds we see what depth these people have and learn how people handle unpleasant facts about their past. It is a story of human courage and love and touches on a fascinating period and place in American history. It is a book to be read and an author to watch.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful human drama
Review: I loved this story which centers on the many human connections that play an integral part in our lives. The relationship between Libby and Leon with flashbacks to their troubled childhood in rural WWII era Maine and were extremely well done.I felt like I really knew the characthers and felt the bond they shared. As the very interesting story unfolds we see what depth these people have and learn how people handle unpleasant facts about their past. It is a story of human courage and love and touches on a fascinating period and place in American history. It is a book to be read and an author to watch.

Rating:
Summary: Best fiction I read in 2000
Review: I read this after my local group had arranged for White to speak at an annual Breakfast with the Authors event. I was immediately drawn into the story and the characters--especially the woman who tells us the story. I did not grow up in Maine but in New England and have spent a little time in rural Maine. The characters seemed so real and true to me. In thinking about the characters after reading I was particularly struck by the quality of the relationship between the siblings. Not a 'Beaver Cleaver', easy family but to me a full telling of a difficult family history and its effects for many years after. Some of the discussion at the breakfast related to the differences between this book and 'The Blind Side of the Heart' and why readers may have found that book a bit more difficult--it does not have a 'simple', clear resolution--also an excellent book. This is a book to read and savor....

Rating:
Summary: A great read and interesting insight into a WWII aspect
Review: I'm one of these people that I select a book based on a review (NY Times) an interesting ad, also the NY Times Book review and, in this case, the fact that it was compared to a book I enjoyed: i.e.Snow Falling on the Cedars...this was a great read, good characterizations, and I learned a great deal about a chapter in US history that I knew very little about --the fact that there were German POW's on US soil working in a logging camp in Maine, etc. --I would recommend this book, and have already done so ...

Rating:
Summary: A rare gem, a literary mystery with much to say...
Review: It is the time of the first Gulf War. "Saturday morning, early. The road up ahead is quiet and dark. The headlights slice through the darkness like a sharp filet knife cutting fish. But what spills out isn't the gleaming entrails of morning but only more darkness. In the rearview mirror it closes seamlessly together again and goes on forever."

The first few sentences are a metaphor of the theme of the novel, cutting open the past and exhuming the buried crime. In the first paragraph we discover the narrator is a woman and we get the feel of the strength of her character; we learn that she is not skittish, not prone to the fear of dangers real or imagined. She is not unaware of dangers around her, such as the bears she could hear, and smell them too, "a smell as hard as axle grease."

The rest of the first chapter is packed with good things: beautiful language, moody asides, foreshadowing and subtle revelations of character. The narrator is a 61 year old woman who runs a roadside cafe that caters to truckers, loggers, hunters, and tourists. We like her immediately.

There is a nice bit about the radio, loneliness, the cover of darkness. "I slam headlong into that darkness, hoping that if I go fast enough I'll shatter it like a piece of smoked glass. And on the other side? Maybe morning."

The glass symbol is reprised later in the chapter, when the red-faced man looks in her car window at her, startling her out of a sleep, "as if I'd fallen asleep during those war years and just woke up."

Sleep is a metaphor, as it is the lack of sleep, she says, "that finally begins to hit me--makes me feel my age like a heavy woolen coat that smells of rain."

And the red-faced man has parallel symbols in "the solemn red face of the alarm clock, waiting for first light." Then later the oil light in her car comes on, "a red demon eye staring back at me." Luckily, she finds a Shell service station open, and there is an interesting exchange with the young cat-eyed man who works there. Comments on war, the control of government, the lies, the play of masculinity and femininity. And this is all in the first chapter.

The chapter ends with a reflection on Time: "Time seems to have lost its texture, is able to expand or contract, to take on new shapes like a cloud on a windy day."

The panther, cat, wolf, bear and other hunter allusions intrigue me. But all men aren't predators. Leon, for instance, has rabbit eyes.

Back to that wonderfully multi-leveled and understated scene where Libby is driving in the snow and nearly runs out of oil. Her old car has a degenerative ailment, like cancer. She finds the yellow Shell station (not a Gulf station) in the fog and the young blond man comes out to help her in orange overalls. He has nocturnal eyes too, but he works "with the slow fussy movements of a raccoon."

He checks the oil and brings the dipstick back to show her, "pointing it at her the way a matador aims a sword at a bull." But he doesn't want to hurt her, just to warn her and not just about the cancer in her car. He wears the orange overalls of the oil company, but detests the ongoing Gulf War where men are asked to die for oil.

He tells her the story of his father who fought for them in the Viet Nam war and was sprayed with Agent Orange, and got cancer from it. He is angry about this, not so much about the dying as about the lies, "We're just looking for the bastards to tell us the truth."

This thread, the individual vs. the lies of the military-industrial complex, is mocked when Libby mentions that the souvenirs she sells tourists actually come from the Smokey Mountains. "What do they know?" And the question is reprised again when Libby discusses the newsreel propaganda pictures of goose-stepping blond giants wearing swastikas and jackboots. But it turns out that these German kids look like kids anywhere. "What do we know?"

A moody windswept cover adorns the Harper edition of the book (starkly beautiful too), and I like the easy-to-read print size.

Rating:
Summary: Lingering past
Review: Libby Pelletier has lived in Sheshuncook, Maine all of her life and has no intention of moving. She is taking care of her sick brother who was recently discharge from the Veteran???s Administration Hospital. Her brother has had problems with alcohol for many years and has not recuperated from his mother???s abandonment over fifty years ago. Libby is going to do what is necessary to take care of her brother. Their lives will be altered forever when a stranger comes into town.

During World War II this logging town has served as a POW camp for German soldiers. The prisoners are forced to work at Libby???s father???s logging mill if they wanted to be fed. Mr. Pelletier treated the Germans well and the feelings were reciprocated. The only incident that occurred during the German???s incarceration involved an escaped prisoner. He was found a few days later drowned in a nearby lake. Nobody gave much thought to the incident until the German???s brother comes to town after all those years trying to find answers. At first Libby is apprehensive but then feels that if it were her brother she would like to know what happened. There are a group of people in town who do not want the truth to be revealed and they will do whatever it takes to keep it a secret. They threaten and hurt Libby and her family but her determination does not wane. She is going to investigate till the very end even if the truth might kill her.

White introduces the reader to a story where the wounds from the past can still linger in the present. His characters are real people facing real lives and tough choices. The past is what made Libby and we get to see that through her actions and some flashbacks. The author gives you a story that stays with you even after having finished the novel. A book that stays with you is one that others can savor.

Rating:
Summary: intriguing mystery of an American POW camp
Review: Mr. White has written a compelling fictional story of a little known fact of World War II history on a virtually unknown POW camp in northern Maine.The story captivates the imagination. However, as a long term resident I felt too many liberties were taken with the nature of the characters of the story. I am sure using place names that in many cases are real were helpful in creating atmosphere. However, the book gave a very wrong impression of the character of the people who inhabited this region both present and past. His description of the environment helped create a mood more in the style of Stephen King but missed the contrast of overwhelming isolation and extraordinary beauty. In addition, Mr. White wrote in the voice of the lead woman character which came across as a man describing what a woman appears to be. It fell short. Fascinating story but from the many, many people who I knew lived there in that era, it plays loose with their decency. A story is a story, and as such it was well written.