Chanticleer Book Reviews

Author: Avis Adams

BAY of DEVILS by Grahame Shannon – History of the Pacific Northwest USA, Maritime History & Piracy, Mystery/Thriller

Grahame Shannon’s Bay of Devils presents an action-packed mystery/thriller that invites readers on a journey up the Inside Passage, a boating route from Vancouver B.C. to Juneau, Alaska, in search of long-lost treasure. Who wouldn’t want to tag along with the protagonist, Sean Gray, archeologist, PI, sailor, jack-of-all-trades, and all-around good guy on a high-seas adventure?

Sean lives on the Tangled Moon, “a 41-foot Olin Stephen sloop,” and we realize we are in the capable hands of a seasoned mariner in both Sean Gray and Grahame Shannon. The hawsers, sterns, stern cleats, and mooring lines create a lingo not only boating enthusiasts will recognize but will be apparent to even a landlubber. Shannon expertly weaves yachting into the setting and adventure.

Darya Hubert, the lawyer to Elizabeth Hadley, sets this story in motion. When her lawyer doesn’t sufficiently impress Sean, Ms. Hadley, Lizzie, the attractive elderly widow, calls on him. She explains her story and shares a fifty-year-old letter that has recently come into her possession. It refers to a box that could hold Alaska riches from the Yukon gold rush. She asks Sean to lead an expedition aboard her yacht, Lady L, to retrieve the package.

Sean may be reluctant at first, but the story’s intrigue captures his imagination, and he soon finds himself logging hours of research before he even accepts the job. We follow Sean as he works the waterfront bars to troll for information and becomes a target in the process, and that’s only the first couple of chapters.

Sean accepts the case and finds himself with a unique and quirky cast of characters to help crew the yacht. Sean must also contend with a rooky yacht captain, a crusty old engineer/mechanic/deckhand, a muscular deckhand/bodyguard, and a parrot who spews profanity at the sight of Sean. And last but not least, Cindy, his love interest, who joins the crew as sous chef so he can keep her safe, a plan with good intentions. Except no one is who they appear to be, and just as high winds and rough waters make it difficult to stand on any seafaring vessel, Grahame Shannon keeps us off balance as the story takes its delicious twists and tantalizing turns.

We cruise from Vancouver up Inside Passage to the bays of Farragut, and Thomas, also referred to as Bay of Devils, in Alaska. Shannon blurs the boundaries of mystery/thriller and historical with elements of non-fiction to build a world typical of the late 1960s, but with the added flair of the nautical.

There is nothing typical about this world filled with moneyed widows, and playboy businessmen turned thug. Sean Gray must navigate the tumultuous waters of all these worlds as well as the immigrant experience of his love-interest Miss Cynthia Lu, a tough broad extraordinaire of Chinese descent and Sean’s match, for sure.

Shannon’s ability to keep his tricks up his sleeve will delight readers as the plot slowly unfolds. It is a classic whodunit that will thrill and amaze readers and fans of the mystery thriller. Our Sean Gray may not be James Bond, but Shannon creates a flawed protagonist who is sympathetic and easy to fall in love with or admire, take your pick.

Bay of Devils is a page-turner from beginning to end and does not disappoint, ever. The action never stops and will likely keep readers glued to the page well into the night.

October 27, 2020
WHISPERS by Lynn Yvonne Moon – Family Drama, Teen & Y/A Physical & Emotional Abuse, Teen & Y/A Sexual Abuse

Whispers by Lynn Yvonne Moon explores the issue of incest through the life of twelve-year-old Musetta, whose father has just died. We meet Musetta at her father’s funeral and realize that this girl is dealing with serious issues. Still, more than grief, she’s filled with rage – and relief. And we cannot blame her. Whispers is filled with enough intrigue and family secrets to glue readers’ eyeballs to the page and hug their parents when they reach the end of the tale.

Musetta can’t get the attention of her grieving mother, and she’s not sure who she can turn to for help. Who will believe her story? But she knows what happened to her. After her father’s funeral, she believes the Friday night ritual of rape is over and that the molestation will stop. However, it’s not quite that easy.

First off, there are voices in her bedroom walls – and worse, the molestation continues. Is it her father’s ghost? She can’t go to her mother for help, and she won’t go to the law unless her mother is by her side. Who would believe her over her late father’s reputation as an upstanding citizen and the favorite local judge?

But Musetta isn’t alone. Her friends hear the ghostly voices and soon believe her. As they band together, taking on the role of detectives, they have no way of knowing how much danger lies ahead. But when one of her friends is abducted, then another, it will take all the courage and resourcefulness she has to continue on and to discover precisely who is behind the creepy whispers and the horrible abuse before it’s too late.

Lynn Yvonne Moon develops a protagonist who will search for the truth no matter where it leads, and no matter what, she discovers about her family. Soon, she uncovers the lies of her grandparents.

Her father was a twin? It takes several more visits with her grandparents and a box filled with photos and papers before Musetta has the proof she needs. But will it only get her into more trouble? Of course.

This award-winning, page-turner of a novel reveals the reality that generational secrets have power. Secrets that put Musetta and all of her friends in great peril. Musetta’s determination to put the pieces of her family puzzle together led her further along the path to her family’s undoing. Because what she uncovers will have readers blood running cold.

Lynn Yvonne Moon unravels her complicated plot on this sensitive topic with a deft hand. Careful readers will pick up tiny clues that will keep them turning pages as we root for Musetta in this hair-raising tale of family intrigue and abuse.

Whispers won the CIBA 2018 DANTE ROSSETTI Award for Young Adult fiction novels.

October 22, 2020
FACING the DRAGON: A Vietnam War Mystery Thriller by Philip Derrick – Serial Killers, Military Crime Thrillers, Vigilante Justice Thrillers

Facing the Dragon by Philip Derrick explores the Vietnam War era through the eyes of an extraordinary high school student named Jim Peterson, who at fifteen made the varsity football team as a freshman. He’s intelligent as well as physically fit as he begins his journey in the backseat of a station wagon with his sister on their way to a family vacation, seemingly a typical teenager.

In the first couple of pages, his dad picks up a hitchhiker in an Army uniform, and the story takes off from there. Jim ends up separated from his family and tries to reunite with them in the Carlsbad Caverns; instead, he is the only witness to their murders.

Jim watches in horror as their bodies are disposed of in the Deep Pit of the Carlsbad Caverns, and shortly thereafter makes the decision to become the young soldier and follow the murderer to Vietnam where he will enact his revenge for his family.

Thus begins the shift to the extraordinary world of military life for our high school freshman, from a boy on vacation with his family to a young man on a mission as sleuth and soldier. The seamless way Derrick identifies the patches and medals given by the military provide clues about Jim’s father, PFC Travis Nickels, and the mystery man Ross, in a unique and interesting manner.

We learn about the importance of a crossed-double sword and a parachute on a patch. We learn a great deal about paying attention to the tiniest detail on a patch to help find clues, which our hero does several times. These subtle clues build interest in the story. The stakes are high for Jim, who takes matters into his own hands and follows the suspect to Vietnam, believing that based on the man’s patches, finding him in Vietnam won’t be an issue.

It seemed implausible for a fifteen-year-old to be deployed with the paperwork of another soldier. Jim Peterson becomes PFC Travis Nickels. Our quick-minded protagonist lies when he has to and loses important fingerprint documents at crucial checkpoints. If a corporal thinks he’s an imbecile, he doesn’t care as long as he obtains his objective.

Derrick takes us through bases and onto transports that finally bring us to the landscape of the Vietnam War, up close and personal. We are with Jim as mines are exploding all around him, as Huey helicopters are blown out of the sky right above his head, as he catches malaria and is assigned the foulest job for getting sick, which Sargent Strode believes he’s done on purpose.

We can feel the sweat trickling down backs, smell the foul orders, and see the bark split as bullets hit the trees around him.

Derrick splits the POV between Ross and the man who Jim is impersonating, taking us back to WWII Germany. The research Derrick had to do to pull this off is mind-boggling. Ross, a German soldier, the same age/era as Jim’s father, lies about who he is to escape Germany, enlists in the US military, and begins a quest to enact revenge for his brother. He is the foil to Jim who takes Nickel’s place, goes to Vietnam, to seek revenge for his family.

Theirs becomes a twisted relationship of coincidences, but a fascinating one as the truth unfolds in the tiniest hints and innuendos. The tension on every page is palpable, as Nickels finds himself fighting in a war, where race riots in Vietnam erupt off the page like something off our news feeds today. The unpopularity of the Vietnam War and the soldiers who fought in it are also examined, as well as the division in attitudes the war caused at home. The author leaves no controversial topic left unexamined.

This novel will keep readers turning pages and reading into the night. Derrick sprinkles so many interesting facts about the US military, the Vietnam War, WWII after the fall and the liberation of one concentration camp in particular. Derrick shows the daily grind of humping through the jungle, the mind-numbing boredom of waiting for battle, and then the chaos in the very-all-too-real life or death battles.

Philip Derrick does not disappoint in this military thriller. He takes us on a wild ride that hangs just this side of “what the hell?” He’s a talented author with a deft ability to capture the historical and logistical aspects of this story without losing credibility or the reader’s confidence. Facing the Dragon is a book for all readers, not just those who love a great mystery/thriller or historical war story. One of our favorites!

Facing the Dragon won First Place in the CIBAs 2018 CLUE Awards for mystery/thriller novels.

August 18, 2020
HINDSIGHT: Coming of Age on the Streets of Hollywood by Sheryl Recinos, MD – Medical/Professional Biographies, Memoir, Teen Abuse/Homelessness, Mental Health/Family

Hindsight: Coming of Age on the Street of Hollywood by Sheryl Recinos presents a childhood fraught with family dysfunction caused by mental illness and emotional and psychological abuse. The two formative figures in Recinos’ life were negligible participants instead of the supportive, loving parents all children need to grow and thrive into adulthood.

While this memoir takes place in the 1980s and 90s, we can only hope the services that support runaways and dysfunction within families have improved. For example, her father’s main go-to plan for dealing with his daughter was to commit her to an asylum instead of doing the hard work of parenting.

Homelessness, a significant theme in this memoir, is continuously in the news, an issue that plagues every major city in America and occurs even in small towns and rural settings. Homelessness is one of those issues that many in America turn a blind eye to and ignore, but Recinos shines a light, bright and clear, on this issue, and knowing her story helps us understand this issue in a new way. It brings a face to embody homelessness and a possible answer to the question, why?

Why do people choose the street? Why do people refuse shelter? Why do some kids become flight risks? The answers may surprise you.

Recinos never places blame, of which there seems plenty to go around. Never blames her mentally ill mother, who, during a psychotic episode, put her and her brother in danger. She never blames her father and portrays him as a figure that we can sympathize with at times. She never blames the legal system that failed her time and again, penalizing her but never breaking her spirit. And she never condemns any of the men that rape or attack her. She doesn’t blame drugs or alcohol or any “friends” she meets along the way who rob her or worsen her situation.

Instead, Recinos tells the story of her teen-years with a pragmatic focus on the events. She never imposes her adult understanding of this world but focuses on her mental state at the time. What she produces is a raw and unapologetic story of a girl misunderstood, trying to survive in a world of neglect and abuse.

That she survives is a miracle. That she finds her way out of homelessness to become a successful contributing member of society, becoming a loving parent with no role model for such a thing is another.

Recinos breaks the cycle of abuse that drove her to the streets. She has become a champion of homeless teens. Her ability to see the injury she suffered through an unfiltered lens, and not accept it or be shaped by it, is why we love Dr. Recinos and her story.

This memoir is a page-turner, a tour de force, a blockbuster read that will have you laughing, crying, cringing, and hoping for something better for this young woman. You won’t be disappointed. Recinos delivers, and she does so with grace and talent. We highly recommend this intense and eye-opening memoir.

August 17, 2020
ENTHRALLMENT by Meg Evans – Paranormal Romance, Romance, Urban Fantasy

One woman unwittingly enters into a deadly game of obsession. What must she pay to regain her body and soul?

Between classes and her part-time job, Zara Logan doesn’t have much time for socializing or even the horror movies she loves and hates, but when Dorian Hatch moves in next door, her life quickly shifts from familiar routine to chaos. Dorian is drop-dead gorgeous. He’s the stuff that dreams are made of – and that becomes a bit of a problem for Zara.

It’s a deadly game, the pursuit of Dorian. Zara doesn’t set out to be possessed body and soul by her neighbor, but obsession is a tricky web. What begins as spying on the hot guy next door quickly becomes so much more. Zara knows her need for Dorian is unhealthy at its most innocent and destructive at its most dangerous, yet she cannot rid herself of the burning desire for him. She sees her identity slipping away, knows it’s consuming her, but nothing matters, not even when Dorian asks what she is willing to “stake” to be with him.

Zara’s attraction to the mysterious Dorian turns up a few thousand notches to an undeniable blazing heat, full-on obsession. Her relationships with her Aunt Cynthia (who raised her) and her best friend suffer when she begins lying so that she can secretly spend time with Dorian. Aunt Cynthia and Rachel try to make Zara comprehend their concerns, but Zara believes she is under control.

But who can fight a supernatural dark force? Zara soon experiences some rather strange physical symptoms such as blackouts and nightmares, and an all-out need for the man. Zara is far from being in control. She’s stuck in an all-consuming compulsion to be near him, but with every move closer, she senses absolute darkness surrounding him and knows it’s only a matter of time before she can no longer find her way back to herself.

Meg Evans doesn’t let up on her main character but pours on the heat and throws Zara into one sensuous scene after the other until Zara feels used up and strung out. The author manages to craft a tale that is simultaneously a steamy romance and an uncomfortable portrayal of what it is to be genuinely obsessed. Indeed, it isn’t until much later that Zara realizes how much of a Dorian-junkie she has become. He is the fulfillment of her greatest dreams and the embodiment of her worst nightmare. She feels the humiliation of her neediness but can’t pull away from the way Dorian makes her feel. How does he do it? What is this power he holds over Zara?

Zara’s stress is nearly her undoing, but this pain is nothing compared to the escalating obsession that consumes and drives her, leaving her to wonder if she is losing her mind. It’s all tied tightly together, which promises to leave readers enthralled and desperate for more.

Remember to pre-order your copy of Enthrallment right here!

June 29, 2020
FORGOTTEN RAGE: Never Forgive. Never Forget (Book One in the Forgotten Series) by Melodie Hernandez – Serial Killers, Detective, Mystery/Thrillers, Pacific Northwest

In Forgotten Rage: Never Forgive. Never Forget, Melodie Hernandez introduces Detective Luz Santos. Young, attractive, and smart, Santos works in Seattle, Washington, a city known for dark, rainy days. Hernandez sets the stage for a serial killer whose victims are not the rich and famous, but the homeless.

Detective Santos rushes to the first murder scene, and soon, we are embroiled in the professional and personal life of one tough cop. Santos’ heart belongs to Cheech, her Chihuahua, but Santos holds out hope, after several failed relationships, of finding the elusive partnership she’s always hoped for.

Ms. Hernandez filters the story through the lens of savvy Latina cop, Detective Santos, who is hell-bent on finding this killer before the killer finds her. As she works to exhaustion, she also struggles with her own demons and nightmares.

But Santos is relentless, and when she arrives at the scene of the second murder victim, the potential killer is found asleep nearby with the murder weapon on him. But Santos isn’t convinced.

Meet Nick Mason, a former attorney turned homeless guy. After his arrest for the murder of victim number two, he knows enough about the law to keep his mouth shut. Once Santos discovers his pre-homeless-identity and the reason he’s on the streets, the two become embroiled in a race to find a ruthless killer who is spiraling out of control. Luz stays ahead of the killer by a hair. As the bodies pile up, the clues come in too few and too almost too late.

Hernandez weaves lines from her original poem through the book to introduce chapters. The lines are from the killers POV, and they are chilling, to say the least. Another stroke of genius comes when Hernandez inserts chapters written in the first person from the killer’s POV, which brings us up close and personal with a deranged killer. But Santos is far from understanding the basics, for example, is the killer male or female? Hernandez keeps us guessing to the end when they find the last clue.

Hernandez presents a protagonist both human and relatable with a satisfying ending that ties up all the loose ends just enough for her fans to beg for book two. This fast-paced mystery will have you reading into the night to find out what happens next. A page-turner extraordinaire, one that we highly recommend diving into.

Forgotten Rage won First in Category in the CIBA 2018 CLUE Awards for thriller novels.

June 12, 2020
TOKYO TRAFFIC by Michael Pronko – International Crime Thriller, Detective Story, Crime Thriller/Suspense

Michael Pronko’s novel, Tokyo Traffic, the third book in the Detective Hiroshi Series, will pull you in from the first page and keep you turning to the final word. He develops a mystery/thriller that gives nothing away while leading us down dark back alleys in his exotic Japanese Tokyo Prefecture setting.

The title, Tokyo Traffic, catches our imagination, as though the book might explore densely populated Tokyo and the traffic that gets snarled on freeways and down narrow dori’s, or the pedestrian traffic that surges through Shinjuku and down crowded sidewalks almost shoulder to shoulder in a sea of humanity. And actually, he captures both of those meanings in his book, but he also explores the underlying theme of human trafficking, especially of underage girls.

Pronko develops a rich cast of characters and builds a dangerous and evolving world in which they play hide and seek. Sukanya, a fourteen-year-old Thai girl and overall kickboxing badass, is our first point of view character. She escapes a murder scene with clothes she scavenges, a wad of bills, a laptop, an iPad, and thus begins the wild ride, Tokyo Traffic.

Sukanya runs from Kenta, another badass, but one who finances the porn and human trafficking, while racing his Nissan GT-R down Tokyo’s highways and byways, avoiding the law and Kirino. Kirino would like to teach him a lesson, the hard way.

Our hero, Detective Hiroshi, finds himself in the middle of a Tokyo that most tourists never see. Hiroshi chases Kento and Kirino, a larger fish in the human trafficking pond. They race from the docks of Yokohama to hard porn studios in downtown Tokyo. Hiroshi follows the money, and Pronko gives us the world of crime using cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

This is a convincing backdrop that doesn’t overpower us with corruption and porn but focuses on the characters and their struggle to survive. Pronko handles his plot and world-building deftly and creates a sympathetic vehicle to explore and bring light to the horrors of what it might be as a child caught up in the drug-addled world of human trafficking and child porn.

Tokyo Traffic is a fast-paced thriller that introduces us to a world we might have heard about on the news. Pronko develops characters that leap off the page. We want them to escape, we want them to get caught, we want them to solve the case, and Pronko keeps us guessing right to the end, as we wonder who will eventually win in this high stakes game of humans for sale.

This book will not disappoint, in fact, you won’t be able to put it down.

(Find a link to The Moving Blade, review here)

May 27, 2020
BLOOD MOON: A Captive’s Tale by Ruth Hull Chatlien – Native American Literature, U.S. Historical Fiction, Western Fiction

Ruth Hull Chatlien’s historical novel Blood Moon: A Captive’s Tale shines a light on two worlds trying to coexist in the 1860s Minnesota, that of Westward Expansion and white settlers, and that of the complex network of Sioux tribes dealing with starvation and disease. We follow her protagonist, Mrs. Sarah Wakefield, as she is thrust unwillingly into the midst of the Indian Wars.

Based loosely on the life of real captive, Sarah Wakefield, Chatlien explores both sides of this conflict, through the eyes of our terrified hero, who does what she must to save her life and the lives of her two small children. The first-person narrative in present tense places us in the thick of Wakefield’s narrow escapes, and the presence of the constant threats to her and her children.

Sarah Wakefield has one goal, to save her children, and if that means dressing like a Sioux and helping her captives gather water, forage and cook food, and set up the teepee, so be it. Her fellow captives, mostly women and children maintain their prejudiced and racist attitudes, but Wakefield does not. She sees her captives as human beings, not “savages,” who are trying to survive just as she is.

Chatlien expertly exposes the mindset between members of the Sioux tribe who had converted to Christianity and those who refused to convert. She exposes the injustices of an American Government that defaulted on treaty promises, causing starvation, illness, and death among the tribes, and the solution that many tribal warriors felt was their only recourse—war.

Wakefield sees the dichotomy of those warriors who want to fight and those who have converted to Christianity and become farmers. She feels the losses endured by those who didn’t want to fight because of their beliefs, but she realized that death would be their penalty if they refused.

The underlying themes in Chatlien’s novel provide us a complex and multidimensional read that captivates. Sarah is married. But her marriage is rocky—okay. Rumors of her past don’t help her present situation. But the woman she becomes as she survives her terror and provides for her children is a woman who will go to battle for a Sioux warrior in a court of law, even if it means losing her marriage and becoming a social pariah. At times readers may wonder if Wakefield might be an unreliable narrator suffering from “Stockholm Syndrome.” Nevertheless, she fights for the warrior who protected her and fights to save his life as he had saved hers.

The injustices Chatlien shines her fictional light on are bound to grate on the progressive-minded reader of 2020, and the conclusion to this narrative based on real events will undoubtedly leave us wondering how little has changed in race relations in the USA. Chatlien shows how simple gossip and the petty mindsets of the “normal” Christian women were as big a detriment to Wakefield’s survival in the Indian Wars.

Blood Moon: A Captive’s Tale won Grand Prize in the CIBA 2018 LARAMIE Awards for American Fiction.

April 3, 2020
A PROFESSOR and MRS. MORIARTY MYSTERY: Moriarty Takes His Medicine, Book 2 by Anna Castle – Historical Mystery

In Anna Castle’s British historical, cozy mystery novel, Moriarty Takes His Medicine, we find James Moriarty and his new bride, Angeline, struggling with their exciting, new relationship once the dust settles, so to speak.

James Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes’s nemesis, is a man who cares deeply for his wife, so much so, that he is driven to distraction and embraces the help of his former foe as an ally to help rescue Angelina from grave danger.

Sound like a melodrama? It is. Melodrama at it’s best, with strong women characters from the 1880s in several roles, providing a 2020 twist to the male-dominated period. That being said, Castle is no slouch when it comes to providing accurate historical details. She’s done her research and offers it up in an engaging and entertaining novel. The health spas and health tonics of the time provides an impressive backdrop to the mystery she develops, as Sherlock Holmes comes to Moriarty for help on a curious case, the death of a beloved aunt whose nephew suspects foul play. Together Moriarty and Holmes uncover a plot of devious mischief by medical professionals at a high-end spa/hospital where several elderly women and wealthy wives have stayed, only to die unexpectedly at home. Castle begins with the death of one woman.

Moriarty, Holmes, and Watson find that many of the women’s deaths went unchallenged because they all died at home after their stay, pointing to their own negligence and not that of the hospital, a devious plan, to say the least. Dr. Watson plays a small but crucial role at the beginning of their investigation as he uncovers the meaning behind “the Clennam treatment,” referring to a character from Little Dorritt, a Charles Dickens novel. And so, as Holmes is want to say, the game’s afoot.

Angelina’s past as a performer, a vocation she sorely misses, provides her with a means to help when she realizes her sister is being sent to the notorious spa for “the Clennam” treatment, code for “kill her.” Angelina takes on the most dangerous role of her life when she finds herself under the “Clennam” treatment.

Castle introduces the tonic as one in a series of archaic and debunked methods of treatment. She also explores aspects of electric shock therapy, and “the rest cure,” a popular method of treating a nervous and perhaps unruly woman to a treatment that did nothing to cure the root cause of their ailments. Alas, at that time, the men knew best even when they were wrong.

Castle turns this male-dominated society on its head. Women display their strength and ability to problem solve as they help to resolve this crime, and they do it with the full support of their men. A very satisfying twist on the social norms of the time, which brings us to a satisfactory conclusion.

In the end, we have something akin to a Shakespeare “comedy,” all the “good” characters live, all the lovers end up happily together, and all the villains fail and are doomed to suffer.

As the second novel in a series, this book could stand-alone. This romp through the beloved world of Sherlock Holmes will surprise you at every turn and please Sherlockians as well as lovers of British cozy mystery fans.

Moriarty Takes His Medicine won First Place in the 2018 CIBAs for Mystery and Mayhem.

January 8, 2020
The PARROT’S PERCH: A Memoir of Torture and Corruption in Brazil by Karen Keilt – Memoir, Dysfunctional Families, True Crime Biographies

Karen Keilt led a life of privilege, a life that most of us only dream of, but she turns the dream upside down in her memoir The Parrot’s Perch: A Memoir of Torture and Corruption in Brazil, where she exposes the seamy underside of that life and the corrupt government under which she lived. Keilt takes us from her childhood filled with the horses she loved, to her marriage to a man she adored, to the fatal incident that destroyed the world she knew.

The memoir moves between New York and Sao Paulo as Keilt sets the stage for an incident that occurs shortly after her marriage. Keilt places no blame, but tells her story with an objective eye, while expressing the confusion she held of her experiences: the kidnapping, torture, rape, and interrogation by the police for “…forty-five days of hell. Three million, eight hundred and eighty-eight seconds.”

Karen Keilt presents a memoir that is tough and unapologetic. She sandwiches her story within an interview at the UN, which is smart because some of the events are so intense and violent, they call for a breathing space where readers can decompress.

The sign of a good memoir, like any other piece of literature, is readers cannot put the work down. Here, Keilt has crafted her story in a plot that flows, and characters who are sympathetic and despicable. We follow her through her vivid, active setting in beautiful Brazil, to the prison, to New York, and California. Her struggles are heartfelt right up to the satisfying ending.

When she receives the call from the Truth Commission, she is willing to help her beloved Brazil in any way she can, even if it means resurrecting her past and the recurring nightmares. She’s interviewed by a political scientist and investigator who is building a case against the Brazilian government for crimes against human rights that had been perpetrated for decades by its savage police force and military dictatorship. These interviews, held at the UN in New York City, envelope the story she relates.

Keilt’s page-turning memoir takes readers on a journey we might be reluctant to travel, but compelling and essential, nonetheless. We must see how she gained her freedom from the oppression and how she lived the nightmare of those forty-five days. Her story is too real, too raw, too vital to simply set aside.

This action-packed memoir exposes international affairs, historical events, and human rights abuses. For some, Keilt’s story will hit a rather delicate nerve and serve to remind us why it is crucial to protect our democracy, to be vigilant and aware of those forces that seek to unravel our freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Indeed, we must all work towards a democracy that puts the lives of its citizens before those of a few powerful politicians who may have their own agendas.

In corresponding with the author, she reflects, “The truth is, I was sooo very lucky. I was, by the grace of God, a dual citizen. I was welcomed to the US when I made my escape. I had with me the only precious thing I could never have left behind. My son. Also a dual citizen. Today, when I hear the echo of those words, ‘Welcome home, Mrs. Sage,’ uttered by the passport control agent, I truly understand how blessed I was. My experience gives me more empathy for the agonizing fear of today’s immigrants who flee terror, starvation and tyranny often journeying through untold dangers for weeks or months only to finally arrive in the US and be turned away or worse, imprisoned and separated from their children. If that had happened to me, I would not have survived.”

Keilt shines a bright light on the horrors of what happens when corruption infiltrates the highest levels of a governing body, something we should all pay attention to and be outraged by. The Parrot’s Perch won Grand Prize in the 2020 CIBAs for Overcoming Adversity Non-Fiction works.

November 22, 2019