Chanticleer Book Reviews

Tag: Small Town Fiction

THE GARDEN PLOT DIARIES by Endy Wright – Short Story Collections, Small Town Fiction, Humor

Endy Wright’s The Garden Plot Diaries is a delightful collection of four short stories about life, relationships, and consequences.

Wright captures the gossip and rivalries between factious groups of town folk, all between sixty and ninety-something, who have known each other since childhood and carry the grudges to prove it. Our delightful narrator professes, “I am a rambling old man with a tale to tell and in no hurry to tell it.” So, settle in.

Hailing himself from New Hampshire, Wright has set these stories in Monadnock, a New England town/region which he peoples with a menagerie of colorful octogenarians who drink, dance, and feud. In the voice of his narrator again, “[these are stories] of chaos creeping into God’s Garden.” Wright’s stories certainly do deliver a wonderful kind of chaos and pandemonium usually expected in a kindergarten class.

We meet Old Lady Sourton, known after her introduction as the OLS. We meet Ivendricus Poudry, or Iven as his friends call him, the sidekick to our narrator, and of course our humorous and witty prankster narrator whose name we never learn, even as we grow to love him.

These delightful characters, and so many more, leap off the page as they garden or go to the Oval in the town center to visit, shop, or pick up the morning paper. A tall tale lurks behind every pair of garden sheers and pot of tomato plants.

No place is safe, even while fishing on the ice. Iven and our narrator head out with Ned Jalbert and Chester Turcotte with some of Iven’s famous Lion’s Tooth wine. Our narrator brings along his fresh homemade cheese he calls Cutting Cheese. They travel to Lake Massabeesacomapesit and commence the tradition of setting up their picnic in the ice fishing house or “bob.” Soon, the wine and cheese are flowing, and the stories turn surprisingly real for our fishermen.

Wright spins his yarn and lures us into these hilarious fishing stories. Within the hour, the characters are reliving their WWII battle memories and becoming a force that even Eris Heavystep’s twelve-year-old twins can’t compete with– and when I say they can’t compete, these boys didn’t know what hit ‘em that day on the ice.

After our heroes wake from their post-fishing naps, they find that the OLS has won their special cheese at the town’s Christmas auction.

They waste no time in getting to the OLS’s house only to find they are too late. Her Zulu war outfit is missing from the mannequin in her museum-like home. Music is blaring and they can’t find the OLS. When they do, Wright describes a scene that will have readers rolling on the floor.

The grand finale is a ghost story to end all ghost stories, as only Farmer Horthfarger Ghunt can tell.

He sets a group of youngsters down in his pumpkin storage shed and spins a yarn for Halloween that would make Freddie Krueger run and hide. It’s a perfect way to end this wonderful and hysterical romp through Monadnock.

These four stories capture the quaint side of small-town living in New Hampshire. Wright draws a picture of a small town then colors outside the lines. Readers will fall in love with this motley crew of mischievous elders planting their gardens and sowing the seeds of prankery and high jinks. Five stars all the way!

April 26, 2024
IF IT’S The LAST THING I DO by David Fitz-Gerald – Financial Thrillers, Historical Fiction, Small Town Fiction

If It’s The Last Thing I Do by David Fitz-Gerald tells the story of Misty Menard, a 69-year-old woman who in 1975 returns to her upstate New York hometown to attend the funeral of her beloved father. She is dumbfounded to find she has inherited his business, making wooden dowels and buttons.

A receptionist for most of her adult life, with no business experience, she is at best ill-suited to the job. Personal problems hang over her as well, as a divorcee determined to keep sober and cigarette-free while in weekly therapy. But to keep her father’s memory alive, she is determined to keep the business afloat while she decides what to do with it in the long term. The last thing she imagined she would be doing on the cusp of 70 was running a business.

She turns the business into an employee-owned enterprise, an ESOP (employee stock ownership plan.) This gives her employees a shot at owning part or all of the business. The skill with which If It’s the Last Thing I Do integrates ESOP into its story, making it digestible, is among its many pleasures.

Her three-man management team is aggressively against it, and the local bank that hosts the trust and handles its transactions is resistant to providing loans to facilitate the deal. As the ESOP continues taking shape, the bank becomes its mortal enemy.

While those issues would be difficult on their own, the collapsing economy of that era pushes Misty’s company to the brink of insolvency.

Buyers emerge offering to purchase it on the cheap. There are unexplained incidents of vandalism on the premises. And in an almost Biblical moment, a huge storm brings raging floods that threaten to destroy the company’s physical foundations.

The decision to turn the company over to its employees, giving them a stake in its future, becomes more complex as the financial noose tightens.

Misty’s family life adds yet more weight to her shoulders.

Her husband abandoned her for another woman. One of her two sons is dead, leaving the other son to bring up his nephew, who in turn has a child. That child, a boy nicknamed Four, has ambitions to become an Olympic skater, but finds his path may not wind up as he envisioned.

Misty is filled with self-doubts. She makes decisions from the heart instead of from practicality. But her belief in the rightness of her decisions, her essential goodness, is one of this novel’s strengths. People both good and wicked drive this story, their motivations and machinations not always apparent at first.

Readers who enjoy a well-paced, gripping novel should put If It’s The Last Thing I Do on top of their reading list. Misty’s complex relationships with her family and her own mortality, combined with her efforts as a CEO, turn this novel into a true page-turner.

October 23, 2023
THE PENNY MANSIONS by Steven Mayfield – Historical Fiction, Mystery, Small Town Fiction

The Penny Mansions by Steven Mayfield, a historical novel of Paradise and Boise Idaho at the end of WWI, offers a concert of drama, comedy, and noir-tinged crime thriller.

The town of Paradise, Idaho, grew as a prospecting town, but the gold and people alike have dwindled. They no longer have a high enough population to keep the state government from taking the land through eminent domain. So, the town counsel puts an ad in papers across the country for families to purchase one of four mansions in town for only a penny. There’s a catch, of course – they must move in, fix the place up, and remain there for the next census count in 1920.

Readers will love the colorful characters who fill Paradise, from Bountiful Dollarhyde, an African American woman raised by the madam of what used to be the local bordello, to Lariot, a genius orphan skilled with rope tricks, and Goldstrike, an old prospector who gladly shares his strong opinions. These lively folk face a powerful threat. Gerald Dredd, a greedy land baron with a high office in the state government, uses his clout to bludgeon others into his schemes to ensure that Paradise doesn’t hit their all-important population count.

Through the people of Paradise, Mayfield explores themes of communities and found families – and what people will do to save them. He shows the dangers of government corruption gone unchecked until it creates malefic control.

Many of the characters are willing to sacrifice so much of themselves to save this small town in the Pacific Northwest frontier. And as the story pushes forward, even the newcomers to the town – not necessarily there in good faith at first – fall in love with the community and stand up against weaponized bureaucracy to save their newfound friends and home.

Mayfield’s writing style is extremely personable and fun.

The dialogue is playful and, at times, terrifying. Readers will connect with and worry for their favorite characters, and rightfully despise the antagonist and his willing compatriots. The Penny Mansions is also among the best depictions of a community banding together for a single cause.

There is a bit of a stylistic shift part way through the novel. After a major event, the story abruptly moves from a historic drama to a noir crime thriller. While this change might be jarring to some readers, the charm and humor of the book remains throughout.

The Penny Mansions will make readers chuckle and smile, and grimace with anger. Mayfield juggles emotion with ease, all while chugging the plot forward to intense confrontations.

October 16, 2023
THE KISSING RABBI by Andy Becker – Small Town Fiction, Jewish Community, Contemporary Social Issues

Based on a true story, Andy Becker’s tale The Kissing Rabbi is a smart, witty, and engaging novel that takes readers into the heart of a Jewish community in the Pacific Northwest.

Here a young, self-serving rabbi sets a town on edge when his salacious desires and personal financial agenda are brought to light by the people he was brought there to serve.

Rabbi Mishegas Dreidel, a young orthodox leader, arrives in the quiet town of Destiny, Oregon. His intentions seem noble as he opens up a synagogue in his basement and establishes a flock of dedicated followers.

Over the next decade, the ever-present counselor builds friendships with his congregants, invites them to dinner, and shows concern for their spiritual well-being. With a wife and nine children to support, he encourages donations from his believers and secures a monster loan to build a beautiful house of worship. He becomes the central cog in a world that he sculpted.

Unfortunately, this rabbi is not the wholesome spiritual leader he claims to be.

Dreidel pushes his unwanted advances on several of the women in the community, seeking to explore his sexual proclivities under the guise that he wants to improve his own marital relationship.

This proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing also involves himself in several secretive monetary dealings. These reach the point where lawyers and the high Jewish court system must get involved to decide whether this narcissistic religious principal must be ousted from his position.

Becker’s absorbing and evolving storyline is well-paced, with a central character whose unstable and remorseless responses to these accusations keep readers invested.

With a colorful cast of characters from rabbis and congregants to attorneys, victims, and investigative reporters, we witness Dreidel’s fall from grace. Comments like “…a half-truth is still a whole lie,” and “You can’t put a black hat on a pig and call him a rabbi!” show the anger of this wronged town.

In a nod to the recent “Me too” movement, Becker delivers a timely cautionary tale, yet infuses the story with touches of wit and humor.

The sprinkling of Yiddish words used throughout brings cultural flavor to the narrative. The appearance of a rabbi group that goes by the moniker TUCAS, (Torah, Understanding, Compassion, Atonement, and Solidarity), an acronym reminiscent of the Hebrew word for butt (tuchas), and other humorous touches bring a balance to the dark clouds invading this suburb.

While the accosted women, both young and old, initially sympathize with the young rabbi’s plight, his phone calls, texts, and unwanted advances force them to recognize the troubled zealot for what he truly is. These shocking revelations divide a community that ultimately hopes for truth and redemption.

In the tradition of Jewish storytellers, Becker’s narrative voice provides a glimpse into orthodox traditions but also examines the nature of human foibles and frailty.

Here that duality is clearly showcased in a patriarchal enclave and the man who holds power over it. Greed, hubris, and narcissism appear as the root of his evil undoing.

Against the backdrop of a warm and welcoming environment, Becker delivers a world turned upside down by their beloved leader, and readers will see that inevitably “the kugel hits the fan!” within this thought-provoking, entertaining story.

The Kissing Rabbi by Andy Becker won First Place in the 2021 CIBA Mark Twain Book Awards for Humor and Satire Fiction.

September 7, 2022
OPHELIA’S ROOM by Michael Scott Garvin – Literature & Thriller, LGBTQ+ Books, Suspense Thrillers

Ophelia’s Room by Michael Scott Garvin begins with a bang – and a child’s whimper.

A frantic, distraught father pounds on a bolted chapel door in a small country hospital…. A tiny, two-day-old infant cries in peril…. A deranged grandfather sees demons in every shadowy corner.

The opening scene read like something out of a young parent’s nightmare. Will their child be healthy? Will they grow up to be successful? Will the child be safe in their grandparents’ arms? Questions that any new mother and father ask themselves. In Garvin’s Ophelia’s Room, the answers are terrifying.

An ominous heaviness looms over this atmospheric psychological thriller, pulling readers along until the novel’s storm-wracked climax.

Welcome to 1969, Parsons, Kansas – a conservative backwater middle-American town skeptically views the changes in the outside world – an ongoing Vietnam conflict, a battle for civil rights, and women’s liberation – as the deviant workings of the devil infecting America.

The Mulls’ family tragedy expands well beyond the child’s monstrous murder when the townsfolk come to blame the baby’s death on her young mother, Delia. Rumors spread that the devil is living among them – and the suffering mother invited the evil entity into their town.

Ophelia’s Room burns throughout with suspense and trepidation. Michael Scott Garvin’s psychological thriller depicts the foreboding sense that a similar fate could happen to anyone – in any town, on any day. This in-depth character study slowly peels back the brittle surfaces of the novel’s cast of Parsons locals.

From one perspective, Ophelia’s Room reads like a recital of small-town life with its sense of camaraderie and community and, occasionally, petty, gossiping meanness as people move through the mundane motions of everyday living. Only in Garvin’s Parsons, Kansas, dread creeps through every turn of the page like some suspenseful Hitchcock film.

Two characters dwell in the heart of the story: the infant’s mother, Delia – and her troubled father, Lloyd Hudson – a convicted murderer imprisoned down the highway at the Kansas State Penitentiary.

As the story begins, Delia emerges from a deep trough of grief to discover that her friends and neighbors align with fear and religiosity instead of compassion. She struggles with the knowledge that her life will never be the same.

All the while, her father remains imprisoned. A compliant, God-fearing man, Lloyd preaches the gospel to his fellow inmates. But underneath his calm exterior, demons haunt him. To survive, Lloyd must take murderous steps to exorcise them. The struggle between the man’s better angels and his haunting demons lays the battle lines of this horrific tale. Pity the poor souls caught in his path.

Beware – Read with care and keep the lights on. You’ll need them!

Ophelia’s Room by Michael Scott Garvin is in the running for the Short List in the CIBA 2021 Mystery & Mayhem Book Awards.

September 15, 2021
MISCHIEF and MAYHEM (Whiskey Sisters, Book 2) by L.E. Rico – Clean and Wholesome Romance, Small Town and Rural Romantic Fiction, Romantic Comedy

Jameson O’Halloran never asked for her life to be so complicated and unpredictable. She never asked for a cheating husband, never asked to be in charge of her father-in-law’s life, and indeed never asked for her brother-in-law to show up looking so irresistible. Since her recent divorce, Jameson has focused on rebuilding her life without the dream family she always wanted. Her toddler, Jackson, takes up most of her time, and when she isn’t caring for him, she is helping her sisters run the family pub in Mayhem, Minnesota, after the death of their father. Jameson is NOT looking for love, not now, maybe not ever again. Still, when her ex-father-in-law suffers a stroke, she is forced into the very delicate position of health proxy for the seriously ill man she still considers family. However, she isn’t alone. Big Win Clarke named a co-proxy, his estranged second son, Scott. Scott, a Project Peace employee, has spent the last ten years abroad, running from his father and from himself, but when he is called to his unconscious father’s bedside, he knows those years spent abroad were a mistake, one he may never get to correct if his father doesn’t recover. When he lays eyes on his beautiful ex-sister-in-law, he can’t deny the attraction drawing him to her. Together they must uncover the truth behind the mystery that sent him running years earlier and hopefully find themselves along the way.

The family bond is a strong theme within this novel. The contrast between the close-knit O’Hallaron sisters and the volatile Clarke brothers is significant to every part of the plot. The “Whiskey sisters,” Hennessy, Jameson, Walker, and Bailey, function as a solid unit. Named by their pub-owning father, these girls share more than their unique names; they have solidarity, which is touching and profound. Even when they argue, they know the immense love they have for each other will never fade. Pulling together to run the family business after their father’s death, these women willingly sacrifice for the legacy left them by their parents. Having lost their mother, the girls have been both mother and sister to each other. They celebrate triumphs and mourn their loss as one, filling in the gaps in their lives with sibling unity. Jameson can’t fathom going days without seeing her sisters, holding them, confiding in them, let alone years.

On the other hand, Scott and Win Clarke (junior) have never had and likely never will have that bond. The brothers have spent their lives at odds with one another, keeping secrets and driving a wedge in what could be the most enduring relationship of their lives. For Win, jealousy pushes him to exploit Scott’s weaknesses, and Scott’s need to escape keeps him from discovering the truth behind his family history and from forging a bond with his ill father. Just like the Whiskey sisters, the Clarke brothers have also lost their mother, but where that draws the women closer, it only serves as the catalyst for pushing the men apart. It isn’t until Scott begins to lean on Jameson that he finally sees what family should be. The Whiskey sisters show Scott the strength behind sibling loyalty and help him face the revelation that changes his life.

Like most novels of this genre, this second installment of this series is chocked-full of romance but with a refreshing burst of humor that will leave the reader LOLing! Scott Clarke is sigh-worthy on every level, and like most male protagonists in a romance novel, he struggles with the notion of settling down and committing to any woman. He’s unsure he can give up his nomadic life while feeling drawn to the idea of a home of his own, a family to come home to every night. Jameson has been hurt in a way only adultery can hurt. She feels unworthy of love and bitter that her picket-fence dream has been shattered by the only man she’s ever loved. In many respects, the plot is traditional for the genre, but the light-hearted nature of Scott and Jameson’s budding relationship is the real gem. In scene after scene, these two–and many of the other characters as well–will leave the reader in stitches. One of the novel’s best parts is Scott’s interaction with Siri, a novelty he has just discovered since his return to civilization after years in remote locations with Project Peace. Numerous chapters end with Scott’s philosophical discussions with his voice-activated assistant, and his first experience with Facetime is priceless! With scenes that will leave you swooning mixed in, the reader will not be disappointed with this clean, wholesome romance.

Character building, not just for the protagonist but with the entire cast of Mayhem, is a strength of the whole Whiskey Sisters series. From psychic baker to gossipy priest to celebrity cat sweater maker, the characters shine. Each of the O’Hallaron women has her own distinct personality, offering a promising glimpse of what is to come in the series. The reader will love her visit to this picturesque town and long for the cozy comfort of O’Halloran’s pub. The entire town is a unique tapestry with love woven into every scene. [Read our review of Blame it on the Bet the first book in the Whiskey Sisters’ series.]

Mischief and Mayhem won First Place in the CIBAs 2019 Chatelaine Awards for romantic fiction.

January 13, 2021