Tidewater Blood: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Low key, but interesting thriller
Review: Charley LeBlanc is an ex-con and the black sheep of the family and has been on the outs with everyone for years. When most of the family is killed by a bomb he becomes the main suspect in the murder. With almost no means of support or help Charley must jump bail to clear his name or spend the rest of his life in jail.

As some of the other reviewers have mentioned, the book was slow-paced. What I found fascinating was the way Charley was able to survive with almost nothing but his native wit. He has no money, no one to help him out yet he always manages to find someone who'll lend him a few dollars, or perhaps give him a free meal so he can continue to struggle on. The best part was the revelation when the murderer and way the murder was carried out are revealed. I don't think anyone will guess this one ahead of time.

This is not a slam-bang thriller but the prose is very good as well as the plot. The characters are a bit sterotypical but if you can look beyond that I think you'll enjoy this book.

Rating:
Summary: Suspense? Maybe as a movie, but it's a picaresque first..
Review: Clear, evocative descriptions highlight this excellent novel by William Hoffman. Hoffman draws you in to the pages of Tidewater Blood until you can taste the rich, plaster dust in the shattered mansion of an old Virginia family, or feel the immense weight of the timeless, coal-laden mountains of West Virginia. The destroyed mansion is a metaphor for a ruined family, and the shrouded, ancient mountain coves a cautionary tale of our place in the world. Justice is well served as ex-con and fugitive Charley LeBlanc reaches into the mountains to uncover his family's secrets. The black sheep of his family, Charley is searching for his place in life, hoping to find it before the law catches up to him. If there is a flaw to Mr. Hoffman's fine book, it is perhaps a too-pat ending. Tidewater Blood is highly satisfying, nonetheless.

Rating:
Summary: Clear, evocative descriptions highlight this excellent novel
Review: Clear, evocative descriptions highlight this excellent novel by William Hoffman. Hoffman draws you in to the pages of Tidewater Blood until you can taste the rich, plaster dust in the shattered mansion of an old Virginia family, or feel the immense weight of the timeless, coal-laden mountains of West Virginia. The destroyed mansion is a metaphor for a ruined family, and the shrouded, ancient mountain coves a cautionary tale of our place in the world. Justice is well served as ex-con and fugitive Charley LeBlanc reaches into the mountains to uncover his family's secrets. The black sheep of his family, Charley is searching for his place in life, hoping to find it before the law catches up to him. If there is a flaw to Mr. Hoffman's fine book, it is perhaps a too-pat ending. Tidewater Blood is highly satisfying, nonetheless.

Rating:
Summary: A MESMERIZING TALE
Review: Pulse pounding suspense and lyrical affirmations of setting are not at all antithetic in William Hoffman's extraordinary 11th novel, Tidewater Blood. An explosive opening crackles into a mesmerizing tale of treachery and revenge, as a hunted man seeks to save himself by probing his haunted past. Set in the bountifully vernal Virginia countryside and the craggy cliffs of West Virginia's coal mining area, here is Southern exposure with a sharp Southern twist.

The patrician LeBlanc clan, proudly descended from gentrified Huguenot stock, gathers annually to celebrate themselves. On this, their 250th anniversary, they have again dressed in antebellum costume to share an opulent feast on the plantation mansion's portico - a meal never tasted as the porch suddenly explodes killing the eldest son and his family.

Immediately suspect is Charley LeBlanc, the family's miscreant son. A dishonorably discharged Vietnam veteran and former resident of Leavenworth, Charley has seceded from civilization, foraging for food near the makeshift he inhabits on a Chesapeake Bay inlet.

Brought in by the police who try to coerce a confession from him, Charley is reluctantly represented by a young court appointed attorney. When it becomes clear that he may pay for crimes he did not commit, one of the scruffiest, most emotionally scarred, yet deeply affecting heroes in contemporary fiction takes off to find the real killer.

During the ensuing odyssey, with the law nipping hungrily at his heels, Charley relies on his war taught skills: "I'd learned to nest keeping part of myself alert - an outer fringe of consciousness that sensed movement and alien sounds in darkness." His quest takes him to the mountainous West Virginia coal mining area, to a nearly abandoned town where his father oversaw a mining operation during World War II.

While Mr. Hoffman's narrative skills are abundant his character definition is superb. We meet an aged, independent backwoods woman, the memorable Aunt Jessie Arbuckle, who has a reason to help Charley. "Had seven children, all gone and spread to the four winds, " she tells him. "The last I heard from was Jacob, the youngest. Lives in Seattle and sent me a Christmas present, a GE toaster, and I got no electric. You chew?"

There is Blackie, the "he done me wrong" disfigured honky-tonk proprietress, another of life's secessionists. "I tell you one thing," she vows, "I don't use the word love no more." Add a grizzled mountain hermit who lives by stealing copper rigging, and a host of others, cinematic cameos all.

As Charley solves conundrum after conundrum to reveal the real killer, he also unearths some long buried secrets about the aristocratic LeBlancs and about himself.

Praiseworthy in every respect, this harrowing adventure captures readers with the opening page and holds them spellbound until the closing sentence. To call this tale a first-rate thriller isn't enough; to deem the author's prose splendid does not do it justice. Tidewater Blood is an exemplary achievement, one that may bring Mr. Hoffman the popular recognition he so patently deserves.

- Gail Cooke

Rating:
Summary: A MESMERIZING TALE
Review: Pulse pounding suspense and lyrical affirmations of setting are not at all antithetic in William Hoffman's extraordinary 11th novel, Tidewater Blood. An explosive opening crackles into a mesmerizing tale of treachery and revenge, as a hunted man seeks to save himself by probing his haunted past. Set in the bountifully vernal Virginia countryside and the craggy cliffs of West Virginia's coal mining area, here is Southern exposure with a sharp Southern twist.

The patrician LeBlanc clan, proudly descended from gentrified Huguenot stock, gathers annually to celebrate themselves. On this, their 250th anniversary, they have again dressed in antebellum costume to share an opulent feast on the plantation mansion's portico - a meal never tasted as the porch suddenly explodes killing the eldest son and his family.

Immediately suspect is Charley LeBlanc, the family's miscreant son. A dishonorably discharged Vietnam veteran and former resident of Leavenworth, Charley has seceded from civilization, foraging for food near the makeshift he inhabits on a Chesapeake Bay inlet.

Brought in by the police who try to coerce a confession from him, Charley is reluctantly represented by a young court appointed attorney. When it becomes clear that he may pay for crimes he did not commit, one of the scruffiest, most emotionally scarred, yet deeply affecting heroes in contemporary fiction takes off to find the real killer.

During the ensuing odyssey, with the law nipping hungrily at his heels, Charley relies on his war taught skills: "I'd learned to nest keeping part of myself alert - an outer fringe of consciousness that sensed movement and alien sounds in darkness." His quest takes him to the mountainous West Virginia coal mining area, to a nearly abandoned town where his father oversaw a mining operation during World War II.

While Mr. Hoffman's narrative skills are abundant his character definition is superb. We meet an aged, independent backwoods woman, the memorable Aunt Jessie Arbuckle, who has a reason to help Charley. "Had seven children, all gone and spread to the four winds, " she tells him. "The last I heard from was Jacob, the youngest. Lives in Seattle and sent me a Christmas present, a GE toaster, and I got no electric. You chew?"

There is Blackie, the "he done me wrong" disfigured honky-tonk proprietress, another of life's secessionists. "I tell you one thing," she vows, "I don't use the word love no more." Add a grizzled mountain hermit who lives by stealing copper rigging, and a host of others, cinematic cameos all.

As Charley solves conundrum after conundrum to reveal the real killer, he also unearths some long buried secrets about the aristocratic LeBlancs and about himself.

Praiseworthy in every respect, this harrowing adventure captures readers with the opening page and holds them spellbound until the closing sentence. To call this tale a first-rate thriller isn't enough; to deem the author's prose splendid does not do it justice. Tidewater Blood is an exemplary achievement, one that may bring Mr. Hoffman the popular recognition he so patently deserves.

- Gail Cooke

Rating:
Summary: Compelling
Review: This book served as my introduction to the talented Mr. Hoffman, and a fine introduction it was. The south is everywhere in this book, from the spare, elegant physical descriptions of places and things, to the clipped, almost abbreviated speech of the characters.

How Charles LeBlanc-a character as close to a hermit as one can get-is accused of murdering a large chunk of his estranged family and manages, through native intelligence and dogged determination, to vindicate himself makes for wonderful reading. I literally couldn't put this novel down, and carried it everywhere with me until it was done. William Hoffman is a fine writer; there isn't one extraneous word in this book. And aside from learning some interesting facts about Virginia, I also found out about a large number of wild-growing things, both animal and vegetable, that one might eat in order to survive.

This is a very worthwhile novel, offering insights into alienation, anger and the need of some for wide-open spaces. I look forward with enormous anticipation to reading his other books.

Rating:
Summary: Well-crafted language, plot, characterizations!
Review: William Hoffman displays in this book an outstanding skill with words and astute attention to detail. His descriptions are so vivid that we experience what Charles LeBlanc is feeling -- both physically and emotionally -- as he seeks to clear himself of a heinous crime. The plot is cleverly conceived; the book, peopled by characters who are life-like in the detail with which Hoffman draws them. Hoffman displays a remarkable sense of place in his descriptions of the novel's settings, which range from Tidewater Virginia to the mountains of West Virginia. Always an imaginative story-teller, Hoffman has woven a story that plays out well!

Rating:
Summary: Disappointed
Review: William Hoffman taught me some years ago at Hampden-Sydney College, so I have followed his work with great interest. What is it that makes this book so compelling? It is Charley LeBlanc's resilience in a world that gives him little, if any, succor. Virtually every character he encounters distrusts him, most are arrayed against him, a few tolerate him. The sole advantage he has against his adversaries is an unspoken bond among the downtrodden. LeBlanc's unerring instincts keep him alive, if not quite thriving, as he works to solve a mystery that makes him the prime suspect in the killing of several members of his own family. As ever, Hoffman writes with style and intensity. He makes me proud to have studied under him.