Chanticleer Book Reviews

Tag: Chanticleer 5 Star Book Review

CURSE of the CONCHOBAR – A Prequel to the Adirondack Spirit Series by David Fitz-Gerald – U.S. Historical Fiction, Family Saga Fiction, Ghost Fiction

Conchobar wakes, barely alive and in a world he does not know.

When he’s found by the tribes who call this land home, he’ll become caught by the ties of family, violence, and love, none of which he’s ready to face.

Conchobar lives in the house of Spits Teeth, the patriarch of his adoptive family. He struggles to learn their way of life, still tied by memory and longing to his home at the monastery of Skellig Michael. But he must learn to hunt, fish, and fight if he wants to survive and belong.

Despite his struggles and the language barrier itself, Conchobar begins to care for the new family around him. But an endless cycle of battle and bloodshed roars between his new tribe and their neighbors. Soon, events will rise and test his peaceful nature and put his beloved family in great peril. Beyond the threat of warclubs and arrows, a dark curse threatens to swallow all the good that he might find in this new world.

Conchobar’s life amongst the tribe of Spits Teeth is defined by his distance from them, his sense of being a fish out of water.

No matter how much he learns to live as the people around him do, he never quite understands them, always somehow on the outside looking in or yearning for his past life. He spends much of his time in his own head, musing on the world around him as he faces new and strange things. The world is interesting and alive through his eyes. The dynamic villagers show their place in the world with every word and action; as Conchobar grows close to them, they show more of who they are, what they want, and what they fear. Conchobar offers his love to his new family and his grave concern as he realizes the danger they’re in.

Fitz-Gerald takes time and great care with Conchobar, sitting with his thoughts and sorrows and joys.

His growing sense of doom becomes one with the story, as cruel twists of fate begin to unfold upon his new family. But between this dread, the people of the village open up as Conchobar learns their language, and the action of their battles and hunts together flows smoothly across the page. Their material world slowly mingles with the supernatural and mystical, spurred by Conchobar’s strange place between the two. But he doesn’t have the time to unravel his curse and his connection to the natural world, as the longer he stays in the midst of battle, the more personal it becomes to him.

The Curse of Conchobar is a tale of violence begetting violence, of the perseverance of faith and hope in the face of grief and fear. Conchobar’s dreamlike connection to nature becomes a religious experience, showing him wonders of the world, cut off by the approach of a people who never needed to be enemies.

Throughout the story, Conchobar’s voice remains strong. Fitz-Gerald breathes life into his Spits Teeth characters. In love, loss, and anger, the emotion is palpable to the reader and will remain long after the book is read. The Curse of the Conchobar – A Prequel to the Adirondack Spirit Series scratches the itch for rich character exploration, historical fiction in a time and place often underrepresented, and a love story marked by tragedy and transcendence. In other words, Fitz-Gerald delivers a worthy prequel to the Adirondack Spirit Series.

April 16, 2021
LITTLE TEA by Claire Fullerton – Southern Fiction, Friendship Fiction, Cultural Heritage Fiction

Author Claire Fullerton’s skillfully crafted fourth novel, Little Tea, weaves bits and pieces of the human condition into a timely story.

Prepare to visit Fullerton’s Deep South, where, like the tropical storms from the Gulf, the southern mystique engulfs the land and its people. Beneath the genteel manners and tradition are whirlpools of passion, unrelenting memories, and behaviors that ebb and flow to and from the edges of conscious thought, leaving behind a sense of anxious anticipation.

From when Celia Wakefield agrees to meet her high-school friends, Renny Thornton and Ava Cameron, to spend a long weekend at Renny’s lake cabin in Arkansas, she’s been uneasy. She hasn’t gone “home” for more than ten years—it’s too painful. She first met Renny and Ava before her life inexorably changed. They were thirteen years old – newly-minted adolescents eager to spread their wings and take on the world. Besties ever since, Renny and Ava are a part of Celia’s present and unthinkable history. Celia needs their friendship, but the past floats just below the surface, like a ‘gator waiting for prey.

But now she must go.

Ava, the fey sprite, the dream spinner, needs her help. She’s having a mid-life crisis and has reached out to her and Renny for support.

Celia agrees to fly to Memphis, meet Ava at the terminal, travel to Renny’s ranch in Olive Branch, Mississippi. From there, they will proceed to Renny’s lake house over the border in Arkansas for a long weekend of intervention and renewal. It’s all about Ava’s issues—not hers. It’s what good friends do.

That weekend, while Ava grapples with her discontent, alcoholism, and re-connects with her first love, Celia finds herself revisiting her own agonies. Her painful past, sublimated for so long, surfaces and demands resolution.

Little Tea resonates on many levels.

This modern-day drama juxtaposes the traumas of contemporary issues with unresolved traumas from history, where, for so many, the safe, secure, and predictable world of childhood innocence was ripped away, replaced by the unthinkable.

For the reader who not only enjoys an engaging story but values skilled writing, Little Tea fits the bill. Fullerton’s use of lyrical language, imagery, and authentic dialogue capture the feel of the south. Her characters are believable—everyone knows an “Ava.” Fullerton uses setting as a nuanced character, always nearby, influencing without being intrusive and, her pacing and word choices are exemplary.

Like many modern, provocative novels, Little Tea ends not by tidying up anything. Fullerton leaves her readers with an open door, so to speak, that allows readers to venture out onto the porch, sit down on the old wicker rocker, and ponder what the characters might do next. In this trusting the reader, Fullerton gifts us with latitude for interpretation.

If you’ve never spent time in the south or wish to revisit, Little Tea will take you there. All in all, Fullerton has given readers a story that engages both the mind and the heart. Little Tea won First in Category in the 2019 Somerset Awards for literary fiction.

April 5, 2021
FORTUNE’S CHILD: A Novel of Empress Theodora by James Conroyd Martin – Ancient History Fiction, Middle Eastern Literature, Biographical Fiction

James Conroyd Martin brings to life one woman we should all know better in his multi-award-winning, epic novel, Fortune’s Child: A Novel of Empress Theodora.

Like Cleopatra, Empress Theodora was a legend in her own time. And also, like Queen Cleopatra before her, Empress Theodora’s life and accomplishments were distorted and maligned by the male historians of her own time. Even after death, men who couldn’t bear or couldn’t believe that a woman, particularly a woman of the lower classes as Theodora was, could possibly have accomplished the things she did or wield the power she had.

Fortune’s Child, the first book of a projected duology, Theodora, near death, determines to leave behind an accurate chronicle of her life and work. She’s desperate to get a step ahead of the official biography already being written by a man who hates her, everything she came from, and everything she stands for.

What’s an empress to do?

As Claudius does in Robert Graves’ landmark I, Claudius, Theodora intends to tell her own story before it is too late. A terrible cancer that will eventually claim her life significantly weakens Theodora. She lacks the strength to write the biography herself. So she commissions an old friend, the scribe, historian, and palace eunuch Stephen, to write it for her.

After all, he was there for a great deal of it. So much of it, in fact, that Theodora placed him into prison to keep him quiet about it all and has now released him to have him set the record straight.

An empress in the making.

As Theodora tells Stephen details of her past, both before they met and after, the reader experiences her hardscrabble childhood. One comes to understand that before all else, Theodora was a survivor.

Everything she did, every decision made, every hard path she took, points to a woman who wanted to survive. In the truest form of survival, Theodora wanted to make a better life for herself, and if possible, for the women who came after her.

James Conroyd Martin masterfully brings the 6th century Eastern Empire to life. From Africa to the Levant to the glittering gem of Constantinople, the reader sees the sprawling successor to the Roman Empire through the eyes of a woman whose story began at the bottom as an actress and a prostitute. Despite the humble background, the Empress determines to rise to the top by any – and every – means available to her.

Empress Theodora’s story will resonate with modern readers.

The determination to make a far better life for herself, based on her own gifts and on her own, Theodora’s proto-feminism makes her an easy character for contemporary readers to identify with as she rises to dizzying heights and unprecedented power. As she discovers loyal friends and makes desperate enemies on all sides.

The facts and figures of Martin’s masterpiece are not hidden. They are for all to uncover. Theodora’s life and accomplishments are not nearly well enough known. The adventure, the danger, the drama, and the glitter swallow readers whole into this recreation of a world that is long gone and an empress who should be better remembered.

Fortune’s Child is a brilliant historical biography rendered in full color, vibrantly animated by its author, James Conroyd Martin. Theodora’s life story is so significant, in fact, that it will take more than one volume to tell all there is to tell. And that is simply glorious.

James Conroyd Martin won the Overall Grand Prize in the 2019 CIBA Awards, the Best Book of the Year, for Fortune’s Child: A Novel of Empress Theodora.

April 2, 2021
The JOY of SEARCHING, BUYING and SELLING ANTIQUES and HOME DECOR from FRANCE and ENGLAND by Dennis J. Kotchmar – Traveler and Explorer Biographies, Europe Travel Guide, Antiques and Collectibles

If ever a love letter could be written in the context of a solid how-to guide in the antique business, Dennis Kotchmar has done a marvelous job in The Joy of Searching, Buying and Selling Antiques and Home Décor from France and England.

Dennis recalls his beloved wife Laura and the remarkable life they shared as they traveled the world locating, buying, selling, and displaying household treasures from candles to couches to credenzas.

Dennis met Laura (now passed away) in 1971 when he was in the military, and she was an assistant elementary school principal in the Virginia Beach school system in Virginia. They shared a love for sporty cars and soon, for each other. Laura had already begun to demonstrate a zeal for collecting and selling interesting objects. With Dennis at her side, she grew this interest into a full-scale business, Chelsea Antiques. It began close to home, going to local auction sales seeking items of unusual interest. With no business experience, they took advantage of the development of Brightleaf Square, a former tobacco warehouse district converted into a charming marketplace in downtown Durham. The Kotchmars secured a space there and began building inventory.

Laura had an eye for décor and arrangement, and before long became a display artist with a fine instinct for desirable products that seemed to come naturally to her.

Her enthusiasm soon led the couple farther afield; noting that antiques and art objects from the English countryside were enjoying popularity, they made reliable contacts there and traveled to and from London where they resided at the time several times a year. From there, they began to buy and sell, remotely at first and then by on-site visits, in France. The work was a continually growing success and, as Kotchmar notes, a continual surprise. Travel could be a joy – or a problem. Laura was once stuck on a plane whose engines were attacked by a flock of birds; there were unavoidable delays for such things as airline strikes; and perhaps most memorable, ten days spent trapped in France and England, just after 9-11.

Kotchmar’s vivid color photos grace the narrative, with a stand-out being views of Monet’s garden including the famous lily pond; he and Laura were touched and amazed that ordinary folk can still visit such storied sites. His book also contains nitty-gritty details of the business, including the contacts made and lost, back roads explored, and the truly spectacular range of items to be discovered, marketed, and enhanced.

Kotchmar composed this memoir as a paean to Laura.

In doing so, he has come to appreciate her intelligence and intuition all the more. He concludes that Laura did what she loved, and working together, they created an aura of romance and adventure that few couples can even dream of. His book will be of interest to fans of antiques and the antique business, as well as to North Carolinians, who will admire the ambition and artistry of Laura Kotchmar, one of their own.

March 31, 2021
DOUBT and DEBT by John Feist – Political Thriller, Suspense/Thriller, High-Stakes Global Thriller

Pipelines—large industrial pipelines through which pour oil, gas, and other natural elements—are not the usual stuff that writers tackle for intelligent, sophisticated international high-stakes spy novels. But then again, most writers aren’t John Feist, whose lawyering background in, yes, global pipelines and related industries such as steel, coal, and shipping companies make him the perfect choice to turn these typically pedestrian subjects into absorbing books. His work introduces us to complex issues involving international trade at the highest level, greed, murder, and above all, the intricacies and rewards of multinational, prominent, and sometimes multiracial families.

In Doubt and Debt, lawyer Brad Oaks is now the president and CEO of California-based Elgar Steel.

He and his wife Amaya have adopted an 11-year-old Canadian girl, Kozue, whose parents died in a mass shooting in Toronto. She is a perfect fit for the Oakes, both in their mid-40s, both in business and personal relations in Japan. Amaya is the half-sister of the two sisters who own the steel company which manufactures high-grade steel pipes through which the mineral wealth of nations pours. She is half-Japanese, grew up with the racial issues of her home country, and is also best friends with Japan’s current woman premier.

In the first two books, the family-owned business was vital in developing the Wishbone Pipeline that brings water and oil from Canada to the U.S. (Any similarity to the now real-world defunct Keystone XL pipeline is purely coincidental.) That project, and the international consortium necessary to build it, involved players including Oaks, the chief architect of the complex trade pact, Japan’s prime minister, her steel-manufacturing brother, secret agents from China, a red-headed femme fatale who is also an engineering brainiac, etc.

Brad Oaks is once again the target of a murder attempt.

In this third volume, the same players face a new challenge: a proposed pipeline that would send Iranian oil money to North Korea, both blacklisted players on the international scene, and violate sanctions imposed by the United States and Japan. Brad’s life is threatened—he thinks by someone involved in the new pipeline negotiations. In other words, if he’s out of the way, then a potential block to the illicit deal disappears.

As the investigation commences, one of the Elgar sisters, June, becomes involved with a scheming, unscrupulous businessman, Bob Hager. He charms her into a business decision that puts her in debt, positioning her to potentially delivering her significant portion of the company to Hager and his greedy associates and thus wresting control of the family-owned business into the hands of absolutely the wrong people. Can there be a solution that will keep the Elgar business in the family and not subject to the business predators that want to tear it apart?

Feist pays attention to the importance of multi-cultural understanding in business.

Underlying it all, Feist delivers a multi-part dialog that runs through all three books about family, commitment, cultural differences, and ethics. Virtually every central character in the series finds him or herself conscious of the morality of their decisions, whether it be Brad’s wife’s constant tug between her new life in America and her old life in Japan, Japanese Prime Minister Yuko Kagono relationship with her steel-magnate brother Iseo, Iseo’s secret relationship with red-headed American Cynthia and his clinging to the glory of old Japan, and June’s flakiness and twin sister Sarah-Jane’s steadfastness.

The business negotiations between the various parties are of a high order, both complex and yet intriguing. They offer insights into how the Great Game between multinational companies and governments plays out, written clearly from the position of someone who has been there as a player. The multiple discussions between the characters, whether American to Japanese or American to American or Japanese to Japanese, have the ring of truth.

In parallel to all this are the intricate relations between the various characters on a personal and business basis. These are people whose lives require thinking on multiple levels, as their decisions about how they live affect them personally, socially, and globally. They live a three-dimensional chess-world life and must live up to the standards of the game.

Do yourself a favor and pick up the first two books in the series, Night Rain, Tokyo, and Blind Trust before you dive into Doubt and Debt, and find out for yourself why John Feist writes novels we love.

March 29, 2021