“I’ll tell you what this is, it’s two gallons of shit in a one-gallon bucket.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte  (NOV 17, 2011)

The hardscrabble desert land of New Mexico is the perfect setting for Percival Everett’s new novel, Assumption, mainly because it mirrors the protagonist’s character incredibly well. Ogden Walker is a deputy in the sheriff’s office in the small town of Plata, where he serves after a brief stint in the army. Plata might be where mom Eva Walker lives but Ogden finds her presence not enough of a comfort to overcome his unease with his mixed African American heritage (he is biracial) or his general malaise with what seems to be a dead-end career. He finds it hard to be content hunting for the small fish even if a colleague tells him, “A big fish is fun, I suppose, but so are small ones sometimes. Depends on the water. If I catch a ten-incher in a creek that’s two foot wide, that’s a big fish.”

One day, when an old lady in town is shot dead in her own home, Walker is not sure quite where to begin. His investigations eventually lead him to discover that she might have been part of some hate groups — it’s a hard paradox to serve the very people who might wish you harm. Before this murder is completely resolved, there’s more trouble. The body count rises again, this time through a seemingly unrelated murder on the other end of town.

This incident has Walker chasing down prostitutes in seedy sections of Denver. This mystery snowballs into a third one where a fellow law enforcement agent is shot and again, nobody knows what happened and how. As Everett goes about putting all the pieces together, the writing increasingly reaches a feverish pitch and one wonders if anybody is keeping count as the body count ratchets up easily and steadily. “Warren moved on to the next structure, knowing nothing more than that he was confused,” writes Everett of Ogden’s coworker, Warren Fragua, “More so with each piece of this puzzle, if in fact these were pieces, if in fact this was a puzzle.” That same disorienting sensation works itself on to the pages of this fast-paced novel.

Assumption is full of razor-sharp dialog and Everett does a wonderful job of capturing the gritty landscape but the disparate story threads and sudden detours in the action occasionally make the book trying.

With the twists and turns in the story, the moral of the novel might well be to assume nothing. But it sure feels like Everett goes to great lengths just to make that point. After a while the story is not so much genre-bending as genre-defying. Readers who like their suspense stories resolved well will find Everett’s latest novel frustrating. Even the surprise ending might not help redeem matters in such a case.

On the other hand, readers who love the chase as much as the outcome, will find Assumption entertaining and a fun ride. When one of the characters in the novel points out that the whole mess is “hinky as hell,” they will only be too happy. After all, when it comes to murder mysteries, “hinky” is good.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 1 readers
PUBLISHER:	Graywolf Press (October 25, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Percival Everett
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Terror of Living by Urban Waite Crossers by Philip Caputo

Bibliography:

• Suder (1983)
• Walk Me to the Distance (1985)
• Cutting Lisa (1986)
• The Weather and Women Treat Me Fair: Stories (1987)
• For Her Dark Skin (1990)
• Zulus (1990)
• The One That Got Away (1992)
• God’s Country (1994)
• Big Picture: Stories (1996)
• Watershed (1996)
• Frenzy (1997)
• Glyph (1999)
• Erasure (2001)
• Grand Canyon, Inc. (2001)
• American Desert (2004)
• Damned If I Do: Stories (2004)
• Wounded (2005)
• The Water Cure (2007)
• I am Not Sidney Poitier (2009)
• Assumption (October 2011)

“Ten minutes later, when Mister regained consciousness on the bank of the river, he learned that Tomas had dived in with a knife in his mouth and cut the sandal free from an entanglement of fishing line. For the most part it was all a blur, but sometimes he thought he remembered rising to the surface in Tomas’s grip – the slam of their hearts against each other and the keening sorrow of love.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill Shtulman (JUL 6, 2010)

Every now and then, a “stealth book” comes along – one that surprises you, captures you in its grip, and doesn’t let go until you turn the last page.

The Ghost of Milagro Creek is such a book.

I expected this book to be something else entirely – a light mystery about two blood brothers who vied for the same gringo girl in the Cain-and-Abel tradition. In reality, the book is lyrical, poignant, and from time to time, electrifying. It depicts the life of the Taos barrio colorfully and – in my mind – authentically.

Milagro Creek is the story of Ignancia Vigil Romero, a Jicarilla (basket weaver) Apache and a curandera (medicine woman, or some might say, witch) and the two sons she raises to adulthood: Mister and Tomas. It is filled with secondary characters who jump off the pages – Raquel O’Brien, the gringo short-story writer, Chief, a bipolar man who establishes a local sweat house, the very fallible priest Manny Petit and a host of others.

The immersion into Taos life is described at one point by Petit’s Right Reverend: “At first, it will jump right out at you – sun gods, saints dressed up like dolls, peyote buttons, nudity. Then you get used to it. You want to be politically correct and all that. Okay, then. After a while, you start to see it how they see it. When that happens, it’s time to leave.”

As readers, we enter this mystical world. We are present for susto—the live burial of the child Mister until “the bud of (his) soul began to swell…pushing outward with mysterious force.” We hear the tales that are the framework for the Jicarilla Apache life. We see the rivalry of the blood brothers becoming more and more potent. And we get into the rhythm of the natural world and all its mysteries and glories.

The denouement is played out in all sorts of ways – through police reports, witness statements, case worker interviews, short-story snippets written by Raquel (Rocky), and a pilgrimage to Chimayo – an actual event that takes place in New Mexico. This is not a linear book; it bounces back and forth in time, switches narrators (a big part is narrated by Ignacia, who is already dead of ALS at the books onset), and saunters back to ancient tales as it bobs and weaves it way to the conclusion. The mystical Taos landscape is every bit as much of a “character” as the humans; as Ignacia says to Mister, “Rock, sky woman…this is your mother.”

Melanie Sumner has created an authentic and heartbreaking book that will stay with me. I urge you to discover it for yourself.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 12 readers
PUBLISHER:	A Shannon Ravenel Book; 1 edition (July 6, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Jill Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Melanie SumnerWikipedia page on Melanie Sumner
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another good a Native American read: Blue Horse Dreaming by Melanie Wallace

Bibliography:

• Polite Society (1995)
• The School of Beauty and Charm (2001)
• The Ghost of Milagro Creek (2010)