Good Trouble

Locations
Call Number: Fiction / O'Neill, Joseph
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / O'Neill, Joseph	4-week checkout	On Shelf

As the first wave of pioneers travel westward to settle the American frontier, two women discover their inner strength when their lives are irrevocably changed by the hardship of the wild west in The Removes , a historical novel from New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Tatjana Soli. Spanning the years of the first great settlement of the West, The Removes tells the intertwining stories of fifteen-year-old Anne Cummins, frontierswoman Libbie Custer, and Libbie's husband, the Civil War hero George Armstrong Custer. When Anne survives a surprise attack on her family's homestead, she is thrust into a difficult life she never anticipated--living among the Cheyenne as both a captive and, eventually, a member of the tribe. Libbie, too, is thrown into a brutal, unexpected life when she marries Custer. They move to the territories with the U.S.Army, where Libbie is challenged daily and her worldview expanded: the pampered daughter of a small-town judge, she transforms into a daring camp follower. But when what Anne and Libbie have come to know--self-reliance, freedom, danger--is suddenly altered through tragedy and loss, they realize how indelibly shaped they are by life on the treacherous, extraordinary American plains. With taut, suspenseful writing, Tatjana Soli tells the exhilarating stories of Libbie and Anne, who have grown like weeds into women unwilling to be restrained by the strictures governing nineteenth-century society. The Removes is a powerful, transporting novel about the addictive intensity and freedom of the American frontier.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Brilliant story collection submitted by MH17 on July 25, 2018, 1:38pm Wonderful, smart, at-times brutal stories, some of the best of which are told from the perspective of men on the other side of youth, sliding into middle-age. "The Sinking of the Houston" gives a vivid picture of fatherhood and revenge; "The Poltroon Husband" sparkles with wit and keen observations about the power dynamics inherent in marriage and the burdens of masculinity; "The Death of Billy Joel" is a brilliant examination of male friendship, the competitiveness and physicality of it, all that goes unsaid. Perhaps the best of the bunch (and all the stories are great) is "The World of Cheese," which explores family complications between a mother and son, the off-hand dismissiveness and narcissism of one generation and the futility of trying to love a self-absorbed narcissist that just happens to be your son. O'Neill is witty and possesses a good understanding of the spectrum of human emotion, with emphasis on the brittle and brutal in that spectrum. Tonally, he may remind you of DeLillo, or Joy Williams; his incisive commentary on the darker shades of the human soul, without moral commentary, with only a curiosity and desire to convey what is true, may remind you of Chekhov. Best book of stories this summer!