The Girl From Blind River

May 1, 2018
A young woman whose broken family amounts to at least two strikes against her struggles to survive and protect her kid brother before she's overwhelmed by a rising tide of small-town criminal conspiracy.Everybody in Blind River knows who Jamie Elders is. She's the 19-year-old whose father died years ago in a barroom fight; the girl whose mother, Phoebe, takes the morning shift at the local diner now that she's been released from prison after eight years; the girl who was left along with her brother, Toby, in the custody of her Uncle Loyal when it became clear that serving her sentence didn't qualify Phoebe Elders any better for motherhood. The one thing they don't know is how successful Jamie's been at online poker, a gift she hopes will lift her out of upstate New York and allow her to live in Florida. But when she overreaches on the strength of a substantial pot she's won, she ends up even deeper than usual in Loyal's debt, and he's quick to call in the marker when he needs help moving an inconvenient corpse from the home of Judge Jefferson William Keating to places unknown. Horrified at what she's already done, at the ease with which Toby is sucked into the maelstrom, and at what worse possibilities lurk just around the corner, Jamie knows she can't trust her mother or brother or uncle--or Jack DelMar, the longtime partner in Loyal's financial shenanigans, or suspicious local cop Carl Garcia, or least of all Keating, the law in Blind River. The best she can do is trust her own instincts and her tactical cunning and her feral will to survive, the only worthwhile legacy she's ever inherited from the Elders family.Massey's debut novel manages to be both poetic and propulsive, unfolding a familiar story of the long odds against redemption posed by family dysfunction with power and grace.

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June 1, 2018
If you're an Elders, it's only a matter of time before you see the inside of a jail cell, or so goes the thinking in Blind River, New York, Jamie Elders' down-at-the-heels town. Jamie's mom is out of prison now, but Jamie and her struggling brother, Toby, are still living with Loyal, the abusive uncle who took them in when their mom was locked up. Loyal sees nothing wrong with getting Jamie involved in his scamming ways, but she's determined to create a better future. Massey's immersive tale of a young woman navigating a hardscrabble life will drop readers straight into Blind River, a town filled with bad choices and even worse characters. It's refreshing to read a tale in which the heroine is likable even as her decisions will make readers shake their heads in frustration; her exit from deprivation is by no means guaranteed, and the ending to the treacherous dilemma she's dragged into is deftly handled by Massey. Often-piercing language is a bonus, as are the nail-biting poker games whose play-by-plays are drawn out to satisfying effect. Readers who enjoy Wiley Cash and Willy Vlautin should try this notable debut.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)