Blackbird Season, by Kate Moretti ~ 3.5 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, Autism, Bullying, Drug Abuse, Mystery, Poverty, Rape, Self-harm, Small Towns, Suspense

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review. 

Release Date: September 26th, 2017

304 Pages

Synopsis:

Where did they come from? Why did they fall? The question would be asked a thousand times…

Until, of course, more important questions arose, at which time everyone promptly forgot that a thousand birds fell on the town of Mount Oanoke at all.

In a quiet Pennsylvania town, a thousand dead starlings fall onto a high school baseball field, unleashing a horrifying and unexpected chain of events that will rock the close-knit community.

Beloved baseball coach and teacher Nate Winters and his wife, Alecia, are well respected throughout town. That is, until one of the many reporters investigating the bizarre bird phenomenon catches Nate embracing a wayward student, Lucia Hamm, in front of a sleazy motel. Lucia soon buoys the scandal by claiming she and Nate are engaged in an affair, throwing the town into an uproar…and leaving Alecia to wonder if her husband has a second life.

And when Lucia suddenly disappears, the police only have one suspect: Nate.

Nate’s coworker and sole supporter, Bridget Harris, Lucia’s creative writing teacher, is determined to prove his innocence. She has Lucia’s class journal, and while some of the entries appear particularly damning to Nate’s case, others just don’t add up. Bridget knows the key to Nate’s exoneration and the truth of Lucia’s disappearance lie within the walls of the school and the pages of that journal.

The Blackbird Season has one of the creepiest openings I’ve ever come across, and while there were some slow periods and I thought the mystery was a bit predictable, it’s a great look at small town life and an interesting character study.

Please be warned there’s a lot of social issues examined that could be triggers for some readers including bullying, self-harm, drug abuse, poverty and rape. These are not gratuitously written in, but instead are layered in to the complicated tapestry that makes up this town.

Mount Oanoke, a small Pennsylvania mill town is your typical small town Americana, and depicts both the best and worst of living in rural areas. On the one hand, there’s less crime and people look out for one another. On the other, residents are gossipy, judgemental, and they’re losing their young people who flee to greener pastures as soon as they graduate. 

The story is told from the perspective of the four main characters: Nate, Alecia, Bridget and Lucia. Except for Bridget, none of these characters are one-hundred percent likable, although in the end I did wind up feeling sympathetic towards them, especially Lucia.

Nate is an ex-jock who at best shows some truly atrocious judgement and at worst is a neglectful father and husband. While I felt a modicum of sympathy for his predicament, his complete and utter cluelessness in regards to both his family and Lucia had me wanting to slap him more than once.

I initially disliked Nate’s wife, Alecia and frankly, found her to be kind of a witch. However, seeing her struggles trying to raise her five-year-old autistic son basically by herself, is heart wrenching and as the story unfolded I found myself appreciating what she was going through more.

Bridget is struggling herself having lost her husband to cancer the year before. She’s a loyal friend to both Nate and Alecia, and is one of the few adults who are truly concerned about Lucia.

And there’s eighteen-year-old Lucia. Just thinking of her even now, two days after I finished the book, brings me to tears. There’s no doubt she’s a prickly personality, and there are times that she certainly doesn’t do herself any favors, but she’s someone who from the beginning is never given a chance and watching what she goes through is heartbreaking.

The story itself is interesting and while I found the pace lagged at times, I still for the most part stayed engaged. While I wasn’t initially sure how the deaths of the blackbirds was related to the main plot, I liked the way the author managed to tie them in. I have mixed feelings regarding the ending though. While it answered the central mystery, there’s some side plots that I think could have been tied up a little more smoothly.

It probably sounds like I didn’t enjoy The Blackbird Season, But I actually did despite the issues I had with it. I would recommend this for not only fans of Kate Moretti’s previous books, but also readers who enjoy dark, multi-layered, slow-burning suspense.

Hiding Behind Patriotism

Tags

Mr. Trump, Politics, United States

Members of the New England Patriots kneel during the national anthem Sunday. Photo: Billie Weiss/Getty Images

Well, once again the covfefe has hit the fan, courtesy of Mr. Trump, our fearless leader. All of you have seen and heard by now his staunch defense of the national anthem and his urging of sports team owners to fire any player who takes a knee while the anthem is playing. But here’s the thing. Have you all noticed a pattern emerging in Mr. Trump’s more outrageous and divisive words and actions? Every single time he creates a controversy there are other things going on. If he’s a master of anything, it’s manipulation and misdirection. So, whatever could he trying to deflect attention from this time?

1. The imminent demise of the Republicans’ second attempt, since Mr. Trump took office, to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Mr. Trump has been cajoling and threatening Congress to give him any kind of legislation to sign, no matter how many millions of people lose their insurance, yet once again it looks like this will be an epic fail. (Fingers crossed)

2. The the war of words between Mr. Trump and Kim Jong Un of North Korea. His unhinged insults and cavalier threats to annihilate another country which has over 25 million people, plays well with his base, but not the majority of Americans. 

3. The candidate he’s supporting, Luther Strange, in Alabama’s Senate primary is poised to lose tomorrow which will be quite the embarrassment to Mr. Trump.

4. There’s been a lot of new revelations in the past week regarding the Russia investigation, including the fact that Russian operatives used ads (at last count 3,000) on Facebook to exploit the racial divisions in the U.S. There’s also been new allegations against Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager. 

5. Remember Mr. Trump railing about Hillary Clinton’s use of private email servers for government business? Well, yesterday Politico reported that there’s now a bipartisan congressional investigation into Jared Kushner’s occasional use of a private email account to conduct government business. And it seems like he’s not the only one. Senior aides such as Economic Advisor Gary Cohn, Ivanka Trump, former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon have all used personal devices and email accounts for official business. 

6. Mr. Trump’s travel ban 2.0 was rolled out Sunday with surprisingly little fanfare. With this new version entry into the country by foreign nationals from Chad, Syria, Libya, Iran, North Korea and Somalia, will for the most part be suspended. Iraqi nationals are to undergo intensive screening. This will take effect October 18.

I have a short wishlist of things I’d love to see Mr. Trump doing instead of cynically using patriotism to attack sports players 1st amendment rights and further dividing the country. I know this is futile, but I can dream.

1. Stop insulting the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un and engaging in what amounts to a childish schoolyard taunting match. It’s not only embarrassing, it’s bringing us to the brink of war. Let the diplomats who know what they’re doing, try to find some sort of compromise.

2. Instead of remaining on your determined path to annihilate President Obama’s legacy, learn from this latest healthcare debacle. Echo Senator John McCain’s call for bipartisan teamwork to fix the parts of the Affordable Care Act that aren’t working.

3. Stop denying that there was Russian interference in our election. At this point, you’re just embarrassing yourself. There is no “deep state” conspiracy to overturn the legitimacy of your presidency. Let Robert Mueller and the Senate committees who are investigating do their job instead of attacking them and crying “fake news!” all the time. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

4. Puerto Rico needs you. After being devastated by Hurricane Maria, our fellow Americans need to know they’re not being forgotten. With 16 dead so far, no electricity, running water, fuel, or cell phone service, they are in dire straits, yet until singer Marc Anthony called you out on Twitter today, you’ve remained silent about their suffering. Right now you need to be “Comforter-in-Chief” and that includes not sending out tweets like today, finally acknowledging the work that needs to be done, while at the same time bringing up Puerto Rico’s debt to “Wall Street and the banks”. 

5. Stop using divisive rhetoric with racist undertones to tear apart our country just so you can rally your base which is filled with white supremacists. And, when you do make comments like you did this weekend and after Charlottesville, stop denying that these involve race. You’re fooling no one. Not even your supporters.

6. No more cries of “fake news” every time there’s a report that you don’t like. Yes, the media needs to be held accountable for truthfulness, but to accuse them of things like not showing your crowd sizes is ridiculous. Your continual heated attacks on them are also dangerous. It was bad enough when MSNBC’s Katy Tur, a well respected journalist had to be escorted from one of your campaign rallies last summer when the crowd of your supporters turned on her after you pointed her out, and called her a liar and a third rate reporter. Your attacks on journalists have only gotten worse and I am truly afraid that one of your less mentally stable supporters is going take things too far someday as a result of your words.

I have quite a few other wishes as well, including one involving time travel, but it’s getting late and I’m giving myself a headache. So I’m going to end this post by again sharing what sends me to my Happy Place.

C’mon! It just never gets old, does it?!