WWW.PUBLISHERSWEEKLY.COM 53Review_FICTION
Miki’s father, an ineffectual police officer,
spends his evenings hosting four childhood
friends who drink and gossip over the
course of the narrative about the hapless
Mitsugu Azamui, a local drunk who claims
to have found a dead body on the beach.
Miki, inspired by an ethnologist she sees
on TV, begins to piece together stories of
the past from the villagers while learning
about Mitsugu’s family connection to a
local legend of murder. In the meantime,
Miki tries to conceal an illicit relationship
with her social studies teacher. Ono invents
a close-knit rural community rife with
secrets and perhaps doomed by a long-ago
murder driven by xenophobia and greed,
which sheds light on the larger historical
brutalities of Japan’s actions in Korea and
Manchuria in the 1930s and ’40s. As a
boat from the village’s past makes an
unexpected, unwelcome return, Ono sug-
gests that any possible redemption must
come from an acknowledgment of history.
While Ono captivates with metaphoric
imagery (a red tide becomes a “huge snake,
born of polluted water”), he occasionally
skirts close to tasteless abjection with
descriptions of lives derailed by cruelty and
abuse. Still, this is worth a look. (June)
Inconvenient Daughter
Lauren J. Sharkey. Akashic, $15.95 trade
paper (232p) ISBN 978-1-61775-709-9
In Sharkey’s stirring if uneven debut, a
transracial adoptee of Korean descent
endures a crisis of identity. At the novel’s
start, 24-year-old Rowan Kelly is at the
ER to report a sexual assault, and a ques-
tion about her family medical history
leads her to reflect on her complicated
feelings about being adopted, as well as
self-esteem issues and abusive relationships.
From there, the narrative jumps back to
Rowan’s first day of elementary school,
when another student mocks Rowan for
looking different from her mother.
Though Rowan has a positive relationship
with her mother as a child on Long
Island, it begins to fracture once Rowan
enters high school and pursues a rela-
tionship with an older boy. Frustrated
by her mother’s rules, Rowan escapes to
college in Pennsylvania, where she meets
fellow student Hunter, who cuts Rowan
off from all of her friends and family,
making her entirely dependent on him,
and is physically abusive. Sharkey gradu-
ally circles back to the opening scene in
the ER, describing the legacy of Hunter’s
abuse and the persistent voice of self-
criticism in Rowan’s head. Though things
start slowly, Sharkey achieves a moving
account of Rowan’s difficult reckoning
with her identity. This is an adept por-
trayal of the long shadow of abuse and the
difficulty of being an adoptee. (June)A Short Move
Katherine Hill. Ig, $16.95 trade paper (288p)
ISBN 978-1-63246-103-2
Hill (The Violet Hour) fills this extensive
life story of an NFL star with poignant
emotional snapshots. Raised by a single
mother, Mitch Wilkins shows remarkable
football talent as a boy in the 1970s in
his small town of Monacan, Va. He excels
on the University of Miami team with
support from his girlfriend, Caryn, who
encourages him to go pro. As the last pick
of the first round of the 1993 NFL draft,
Mitch joins the New England Patriots as
a linebacker. Hill hopscotches acrosstime, highlighting changes in Mitch’s
career as he switches teams and matures
from assured rookie to subdued veteran
(“Every hit, every lost hour of sleep,
caught up to him”) through a 14-season
career. Chapters
alternate
between charac-
ters, including
Caryn, whom
Mitch marries
and divorces;
their daughter,
Alyssa; and
Mitch’s close
friend and brash
teammate,
D’Antonio Mars. The ravages of football
and multiple marriages catch up to an
ailing Mitch, who in 2019 suffers from
debilitating headaches and vision prob-
lems. Hill’s elision of details about
Mitch’s divorces and retirement increase
the emotional effect of the changes in his
life on the reader, and a surprising coda★ A Saint from Texas
Edmund White. Bloomsbury, $26 (304p) ISBN 978-1-63557-255-1W
hite (The Unpunished Vice) serves up a mesmerizing
sensual history of identical twin sisters who leave
their booming Texas oil town for Paris and a
Colombian convent. As teens in 1950s Ranger,
Tex., Yvonne and Yvette Crawford are as different as can
be. Yvonne listens to top-10 radio hits, reads women’s
magazines, and aspires to French aristocracy and a career
in fashion; Yvette, with a “crush on God,” prefers Bach
and performing acts of charity. Both are determined to
escape their small-minded, oil-rich abusive father and
social climbing stepmother. Most of the retrospective
narrative comes from Yvonne’s point of view, focusing
on her sumptuous experience in Paris, where she travels for her college junior year
abroad and instantly immerses herself in haute couture. Surrounded by a plenitude
of Givenchy and marrons glaces, Yvonne soon marries Adhéaume de Courcy, whom
she characterizes as a “spendthrift, unloving, snobbish popinjay.” The marriage
contract is simple: his title for her money. Meanwhile, Yvette’s success as a miracle-
working nun in Jericó, Colombia, is revealed in a series of letters sprinkled
throughout, which include details of Yvette’s amorous friendship with a fellow nun.
Yvonne is also romantically interested in women, and White elevates his delicious
descriptions of Yvonne’s lecherous thoughts about a sorority sister with notes of
Yvonne’s mature self-awareness. Bombshell revelations abound when the narrative
reaches its boiling point, which White handles with aplomb. Equally tender and
salacious, White’s deeply satisfying character study demonstrates his profound
abilities. Agent: Peter Straus, RCW. (Aug.)