I recently devoured called Setting Free the Kites by novelist Alex George.  Reminiscent of the great characters in John Irving’s Hotel New Hampshire and the atmospheric Empire Falls by Richard Russo, George takes us to a fictional town on the coast of Maine.  Anyone who has visited the Maine coast will recognize the cold surf, the dilapidated mills, and the dissonance between townies and tourists.  Two boys become fast friends and their lives intersect in stunningly beautiful, jaw-dropping exclamatory and achingly agonizing ways.  There we meet Nathan Tilly and Robert Carter, thrown together in a middle school locker room when young Robert is having his head flushed by the local bully.  Nathan, a plucky kid, comes to Robert’s rescue forging a deep and abiding friendship.  READ MORE

Weathering by Lucy Wood

Recommended by Lynn M. Piotrowicz

1/26/2017

I remember with startling acuity the red scarf flittering in the snow of Mary Lawson’s Crow Lake.  I can still feel the raw cold wind on my face, the weight of my winter outerwear and boots as I trudged through the deeply drifted snow approaching that red flag in the pristine field of white, the anxious foreboding Lawson created with masterful tension.  The power of that image has stayed with me for over 15 years.  When I started Weathering by Lucy Wood I experienced that same transcendence, knowing that another author would mark a notch in my literary noggin.  READ MORE