November 23, 2020
Brooks (Painted Horses) tells an appealing story about a boy who longs to fly. The year is 1937, and in Big Coulee, Mont., 14-year-old Houston “Huck” Finn is building his own airplane based on plans he found. He receives unexpected help when his cousin, 18-year-old Annelise Clutterbuck, arrives for a stay, her parents thinking it best to put physical distance between her and her aviator boyfriend. Free-spirited Annelise dives right in to Huck’s project, as does blacksmith Yakima McKee. Things become complicated when Huck finds a dead body and removes from the corpse a special Longines Lindbergh flight watch. In doing so, he unknowingly places himself, Annelise, and Yakima in jeopardy with the gangsters who are desperate to retrieve the watch. The story takes place against the background of Amelia Earhart’s around-the-world flight, which figures somewhat mystically in the novel’s airborne climax. Part coming-of-age story, part adventure, and part gangster melodrama, the elements don’t totally come together, but the nostalgic atmosphere and exciting flying scenes transport the reader to an early, adventurous time in aviation history. When airborne, Brooks really shines. Agent: Kirby Kim, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc.
December 15, 2020
Teenage cousins get the jump on the aviation age in 1930s Montana. In an opening suggesting a Disney-esque Western adventure, Houston "Huck" Finn, a 14-year-old engineering prodigy in Big Coulee, Montana, designs his own glider, wrecks it in a ballfield, then turns to his next project--building, in his father Roy's smithy, a prop airplane powered by a Ford engine and, later, supercharged with vacuum cleaner parts. Brooks' singular style, evoking the ornate vernacular of a cowboy poet, does not quite distract from the fact that we're going deep--too deep--into the mechanics of any practical challenge that might arise, such as retrieving a gangster's body from a trout stream with an ingenious pulley system. Huck and his bookish pal, Raleigh, find a Lindbergh flight watch on the body, and Huck can't resist hoarding this talisman of his idol. That watch provides the key to a mystery plot that quickly fades into irrelevance. Huck's 18-year-old cousin, Annelise, newly arrived from California, sports an identical watch, on loan from her flight instructor and first lover. Annelise's "ruin" is the reason her mother has exiled her to Montana. Her maternal Aunt Gloria, Huck's mother, worships charismatic preacher Aimee Semple McPherson almost as much as Annelise adores Amelia Earhart, who, as this novel's convoluted and multivoiced action unfolds, vanishes over the Pacific. Annelise will test-pilot Huck's new rig and court new ruin with Roy's assistant, McKee, a former member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. However, she's sometimes arbitrarily sidelined, as is Gloria, who spends long stretches of the novel in Bible-thumping seclusion at the family ranch. But Brooks won't let any of his characters be marginalized, or stereotyped, for long. The backstories of Roy, McKee, and Gloria are a vivid, anecdotal compendium of Western disgrace and glory. Although the flight scenes are majestic, they're often truncated by excessively detailed preflight tinkering. Amid all the eloquence, history, scenery, and how-to, forward momentum stalls. An occasionally profound novel that takes risks with language and readers' patience.
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Starred review from February 1, 2021
Houston "Huck" Finn, a precocious 14-year-old, has built, flown, and crashed his own glider, but he's on to bigger things. It's 1937 in rural Montana, and with the Great Depression in full swing, Huck has to economize with parts from Model Ts and vacuum cleaners to build a two-seater mono wing, following instructions in the 1932 Flying and Glider Manual. He uses the back room of his father's machine shop and the expertise of a blacksmith named Yakima McKee to build his plane. When his teenage cousin Annelise arrives from Los Angeles, she brings sophistication beyond her years and experience as a pilot (she wears a Lindbergh flight watch). Life abruptly changes when Huck discovers a bullet-riddled corpse floating in the river, also wearing a Lindbergh flight watch. Huck filches the valuable watch for safekeeping, which brings law enforcement and the victim's outlaw cronies to his doorstep. But Huck, Annelise, and McKee form an undaunted team, not only to bring the airplane into being but also to solve the criminals' activities. It's an exciting summer in Big Coulee, MT. VERDICT With a nod to Ivan Doig's straightforward folksy style, this impressive second novel after Painted Horses tells an earnest, heartfelt family story with laugh-out-loud humor, deep-seated family conflicts, and distressing coming-of-age crises. Enthusiastically recommended.--Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO
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February 15, 2021
Brooks (Painted Horses, 2014) evokes rural Montana's magnificent beauty in his coming-of-age novel set during the golden age of aviation, an era marked by technical ingenuity and the allure of wide-open skies. In the small town of Big Coulee in 1937, 14-year-old Houston "Huck" Finn yearns to build and fly an airplane and has the chops to achieve it. With his Pop's support and the help of a new machinist, "Yak" McKee, Huck works diligently while hiding the project from his overprotective, religious mother. His sophisticated, 18-year-old cousin, Annelise, a pilot-in-training sent away from California to preserve her reputation after a romantic liaison, arrives expecting dreary exile but finds her excitement rekindled by Huck's enterprise. Danger and mystery enhance the plot when gangsters seek to reclaim an expensive watch Huck had pulled off a dead man found in a local creek. The cast and their interactions are wonderful, and tangents on their personal stories deepen the characterizations and historical backdrop. Brooks has created an entrancing tale about the challenges of pursuing one's dreams and life on American frontiers, old and new.
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