Review: The Last Thing to Burn by Will Dean

Jane lives a simple life as a farmer's wife. Each day blends into the next as she follows a mundane routine of cooking and cleaning. Her husband, Leonard, works all day in the fields and rules his home with an iron fist. He punishes Jane for any act of disobedience by burning her prized possessions, one by one. What makes this punishment all the more harsh is that Jane is a victim of human trafficking and hardly has anything to call her own other than some letters from her sister and an old copy of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Leonard keeps her captive in the isolated farmhouse where she is monitored by security cameras that record her every move. After exhausting all attempts to escape in the first few years of her captivity and suffering a terrible injury to one of her ankles, Jane has more or less become resigned to her twisted role as Leonard's wife. That changes when Jane becomes pregnant.

Determined that her daughter will not grow up to be preyed upon by such a monster as Leonard, Jane again begins dreaming about escaping one day. Things get even more interesting when her husband kidnaps a local woman and keeps her in the cellar below the farmhouse where is forced to endure unspeakable horrors. Kidnapping and holding Jane against her will was easy enough since she was a Vietnamese woman who had been smuggled into the country illegally. There was no one looking for her when she went missing. It's an entirely different ball game with Cynthia, Leonard's latest victim, who is on the nightly news and has become the focus of local law enforcement. He's starting to feel the pressure and it's not long before Jane realizes that this situation might provide her with her one and only chance for freedom, if she's brave enough to risk everything and try.

When I first heard about this novel, it was being compared a lot to Room, which I read several years ago. I have to say that I enjoyed both novels, but The Last Thing to Burn was so much more engrossing to me. I practically devoured it in one sitting. Kudos to Will Dean for being able to write about such a mundane existence without actually boring the reader. There was always something going on to keep me turning the pages. While there were instances of abuse mentioned in the novel, I appreciated that they were more alluded to rather than described. I was already unsettled by Jane's situation and I think gratuitous descriptions of rape would have made this too much for me to stomach. If you are looking for a thrilling page-turner, look no further!

My Rating: ★★★★1/2

*Thanks to the author, Atria Books, and Netgalley for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Review: Strongheart by Jim Fergus

My chest is heavy and I feel raw as I sit down to write my review for the final novel in the One Thousand White Women trilogy. I feel as if I've just said goodbye to dear friends, knowing I will never see them again. The journals of these remarkable ladies will stay with me for a long time. 

Strongheart continues to follow the native and white women characters that readers fell in love with in the first two books, including the beloved May Dodd (who did not die after the morning massacre on her village like we were led to believe).  Old favorites make their way back into the story and new characters are introduced (I can't tell you how much I loved Chance). The narrative alternatives between the past -through the journals of May and Molly, and the present- through J.W.'s relationship with Molly Standing Bear. I didn't want the say goodbye to these characters, so while the narratives were wrapped up very nicely, it was bittersweet.

The one downfall of historical fiction, I suppose, is that we already know how the big picture ends. The white settlers conquer the last of the native tribes and force them to assimilate into the white way of life or live on reservations in deplorable conditions. This reality is a heavy cloud over the future of those characters who choose to continue their fight against the U.S. government. While I didn't particularly connect with J.W.'s storyline as much as the women's, I appreciated that Fergus used Molly Standing Bear to share the realities of modern reservation life and crimes against native women. I don't think most people are aware of the statistics shared in the novel since it's not often focused on in the press. 

I think most readers will be satisfied with how Fergus ties everything together and ends this exceptional trilogy. It pains me to say this, but if I compare it to the other books in the series, this was my least favorite overall for a few reasons. First off, I would say that J.W. and Molly's relationship slowed down the pace of the novel quite a bit. While I liked their story, I think it detracted from what was going on with the other characters. The novel would have been just as good (if not better) with just the usual introduction and epilogue from J.W. like readers were used to in the first two books. My other complaint is that there is a lot of repetition between the two journals. I understand that Fergus might have done this to make the accounts seem more authentic having been written independently of each other, but it got tiresome rereading dozens of pages about the exact same event from the chapter before. In most of these instances, May's and Molly's perspectives weren't different enough to really warrant so much repetition.

Those small issues aside, Strongheart is the perfect ending to such a memorable story. Save it for a time when you can read uninterrupted for hours because you're not going to want to put this down! 

My Rating: ★★★★☆

*Thanks to the author, St. Martin's Press, and Netgalley for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review!