RAFT OF STARS :: Andrew J. Graff

 A version of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness and is republished here with permission.

Andrew J. Graff's debut, Raft of Stars, is a magnificent saga of friendship, loss and heroism, wrapped in the fallout of war and action that recalls adventure stories of old. In 1994 Claypot, Wis., 10-year-old best friends Fischer "Fish" Branson and Dale "Bread" Breadwin tear around town on their Huffys and roam the Northwoods, exploring and escaping their respective sorrows. Fish is mourning his military father's death, which precipitates his summer visits to Claypot, to his maternal grandfather, Teddy Branson, widower and Korean war veteran. Bread's father is an abusive drunk they avoid at all costs.

At the local gas mart, Tiffany works the counter, staving off homelessness, bantering with the locals and trying to catch the attention of Sheriff Cal. Cal is new to town, up from Houston where his confrontation with a violent parolee made a fresh start necessary. After Fish shoots Bread's father to stop another beating, the boys pack supplies, leave a note for Teddy and run away to build a raft and live off the land. The life-battered locals join with Fish's stalwart mother, Miranda, in a frantic search for the boys in the Wisconsin wilderness.

As the pairs (Fish and Bread, Teddy and Cal, Tiffany and Miranda) converge at the perilous gorge rapids the boys don't know exist, they learn about themselves, each other and the things that are most important. Graff's nature writing is absorbing, and his characters generate a yearning to know them. Raft of Stars is a quest story full of heart and humor. 

OSLO, MAINE :: Marcia Butler

A version of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness and is republished here with permission.

The intense and vivid ensnaring of a pregnant moose sets in motion a chain of events that highlights Marcia Butler's shining character work in Oslo, Maine. Relationships are at the forefront in a town where news travels swiftly and secrets are hard kept. Husbands and wives, parents and children, neighbors and friends intertwine with the doomed moose, one of the novel's briefest but most poignant narrators.

Twelve-year-old Pierre Roy suffers severe memory loss following an encounter with the trapped moose. His injury puts additional stress on his parents, Claude and Celine, who now "fling synonyms at each other" over what kind of boy Pierre is. Man's man Claude, already eaten alive by Pierre's disturbing love of books ("They'd abducted his son with stealth and breathtaking speed from the day he'd started kindergarten"), becomes more despondent when Pierre finds solace in violin lessons and the crevasse between Claude and Celine widens.  

Neighbors Sandra and Jim, professional musicians, have issues and secrets of their own. Sandra is not only teaching Pierre but doing much of the housework while at Pierre's since Celine is adrift in a haze of drugs. The more Sandra helps, the closer things come to spinning out of everyone's control. Butler (Pickle's Progress) writes beautifully and with depth, each character mined for internal gems. Story is secondary, and while some plot arcs are dropped and the rest are tied up a bit too abruptly in an epilogue, the personalities that occupy Oslo, Maine are sufficiently intriguing to buoy this peculiarly engrossing tale.