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Summary
Summary
The bestselling author of Back Roads returns to the Pennsylvania mine communities she knows so well, this time with the raucous voice of a woman who's used to holding her own among the miners.
Author Notes
Renée Raudman is a multi-award-winning audiobook narrator who has performed on film, television, radio, and stage. Her television appearances include the recurring role of Jordon on One Life to Live, Phyllis on Passions, and guest-starring roles on 3rd Rock from the Sun, The Drew Carey Show, Hercules: The Legendary Journey, and others. She spent several years voicing characters on The Simpsons and is currently Miss Butterbean on The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. Her voice has also been used on several videogames, including Metal Gear Solid, Everquest II, So Com II, Buraiden, Gungrave OD, and Pursuit Force.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
O'Dell, whose debut, Back Roads (2000), was an Oprah pick, returns with a terrific third novel set in a Pennsylvania coal country of broken families, altercations and smalltown coping. Policewoman-turned-cabbie Shae-Lynn Penrose, a little over 40 and back in Jolly Mount after a rent-a-cop stint in Washington, D.C., raised son Clay (24 and the town deputy) on her own. For the past 18 years, she has believed that her sister, Shannon, was killed by their abusive father while Shae-Lynn was at college. (Their mother died of complications after giving birth to Shannon; their father was killed much later in a mine explosion.) When a New York lawyer turns up asking for Shannon Penrose, whom he seems to have seen recently, Shae-Lynn is shocked; when Shannon herself suddenly turns up, very pregnant, Shae-Lynn's reaction is primal and tactile. As O'Dell slowly unspools Shannon's very-much-of-her-own-doing predicament, O'Dell demonstrates her mastery of set-piece dialogue, reeling off stingingly acute encounters that are as funny as they can be crushingly sad. Ne'er-do-well Choker Simms (and his two kids, Fanci and Kenny), lawyer Gerald Kozlowski, mine owner Cam Jack, Shae-Lynn's nonboyfriend E.J., Shannon's sort-of-boyfriend Dmitri and others are all wonderfully drawn through Shae-Lynn's keen observations. Family saga O'Dell-style crackles with conflict and a deep understanding of the complications and burdens that follow attachment, sex, love and kinship. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Past the wordplay of the title and the cowboy boot on the jacket, this is a masterfully unfolded, absolutely engrossing story as smart and sassy as it is wise. At 40, Shae-Lynn Penrose has overcome a mostly motherless, abusive childhood and a teenage pregnancy to finish college, work for the D.C. Capitol Police, raise her son alone, and return to her coal-mining hometown of Jolly Mount, Pennsylvania. Here she runs a one-vehicle cab company; her father died in a mine; her best friend, E. J., was one of the Jolly Mount 5, whose survival after a mine explosion made headlines; and her son, Clay, is a deputy for Sheriff Ivan Zoschenko (from O'Dell's Coal Run, 2004). Then Shannon, the younger sister Shae-Lynn thought long dead, shows up and reveals an unorthodox means of making money that's causing a ruckus. Dealing with a burgeoning love affair and revelation of parentage, plus the surviving miners' intent to sue the coal company, O'Dell also examines such issues as abuse, betrayal, abandonment, perseverance, and reconciliation, with love at the heart of it all, in crisp, insightful prose that sweeps the reader along. A knockout. --Michele Leber Copyright 2007 Booklist
Kirkus Review
From Oprah Book Club alum O'Dell (Back Roads, 2000, etc.), the far-fetched tale of a cab driver whose long-lost sister turns out to be a surrogate-mother-for-hire. Narrator Shae-Lynn Penrose, the author's first female protagonist, is a ballsy, sassy delight, but the story she tells verges on ridiculous. Shae-Lynn's sister Shannon turns up after 18 years, pregnant with her tenth baby and planning, as usual, to sell it to a wealthy couple. Shannon has run out on the sleazy New York lawyer who sets up the adoptions because she's made her own deal with a Connecticut woman and doesn't want to share the money. Both of these caricatures come looking for her in Centresburg, the Penroses' hard-pressed hometown in Pennsylvania coal country; so does an equally cartoonish Russian gangster, the buddy of another guy Shannon double-crossed. How did Shae-Lynn's sister get to be so callous? The answer lies in the girls' miserable childhood with a widowed father so brutal that when Shannon disappeared, her sister assumed he'd killed her. Shae-Lynn has blunt, bracing things to say about the complicity of their blue-collar community, which disapproved of Dad beating his daughters but did nothing to stop him; she saw lots of domestic abuse swept under the rug during her years as a police officer in Centresburg. Dad wasn't the only brutal coalminer, and even good men like Shae-Lynn's beloved friend E.J., who survived a cave-in two years ago, bear the physical and psychic wounds inflicted by their back-breaking profession. O'Dell's unsentimental, loving depiction of working-class life is as moving as ever. Also familiar, unfortunately, is her weakness for lurid plotting, which here includes the heavily foreshadowed exposure of the man who fathered Shae-Lynn's illegitimate baby and the mustache-twirling cynicism with which he reveals his base nature to their horrified adult son. Many wonderful scenes bear witness for people too often left voiceless in American literature, but coming on the heels of the majestic, passionate Coal Run (2004), this undisciplined novel is a disappointment. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Be prepared for an emotional roller-coaster ride with this latest from O'Dell (Coal Run). The author's focus is Jolly Mount, a small Pennsylvania coal-mining town, but abuse and baby-selling figure into the mix. Years ago, adult siblings Shae-Lynn and Shannon escaped their abusive widowed father: single mother Shae-Lynn took a detour, with young son in tow, and did a six-year stint as a Washington, DC, police officer; younger sister Shannon, however, vanished one day and never resurfaced. Feisty Shae-Lynn, now a cab driver back in Jolly Mount, has long theorized about Shannon's whereabouts. So when a variety of shady sorts begins popping up in Jolly Mount searching for Shannon, Shae-Lynn's suspicions are naturally aroused. O'Dell successfully combines the story of negligent coal-mine owners and unfortunate, disabled, or dead miners with Shae-Lynn's own troubled past in this intense, racy, raucous, and often hilarious novel. Although she occasionally includes some jarring topics that veer toward the sentimental, she also packs this gripping tale with loads of action, intrigue, and suspense. Strongly recommended for all public library collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/06; O'Dell's Back Roads was a 2000 Oprah's Book Club pick.-Ed.]-Andrea Tarr, Corona P.L., CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter One I drive a cab in a town where no one needs a cab but plenty of people need rides. I've been paid with casseroles, lip gloss, plumbing advice, beer, prayers for my immortal soul, and promises to mow my yard, but this is the first time I've ever been offered something living. The girl's around eleven or twelve. About twenty years too soon, she already possesses the self-centered, self-destructive attitude of a survivor of a string of bad relationships, failed diets, a drinking problem, and the realization that life is just a bunch of confusing, painful stuff that fills up the time between your favorite TV shows. Her outfit looks like it's been picked out by a pedophile with a penchant for banging hillbilly girls, but more than likely her mom bought it for her. She's dressed in a pair of tight denim shorts with eyelet trim, a pair of clear plastic platform sandals encrusted in silver glitter, and a skimpy halter made from red bandanna material. Her exposed midriff sports a unicorn tattoo which I hope is water soluble. She wants a ride from Jolly Mount to the mall and wants to pay for it with her four-year-old brother. "I'm not doing this for my health," I explain to her as I put the nozzle back into the gas pump. "This is my job. I have to make a living. I can't pay my mortgage or my heating bill with a toddler." "You could sell him," she suggests. "That's against the law." "The law won't ever find out." I screw my gas cap back on. She watches me while she stands with all her weight positioned on one skinny leg, one nonexistent hip thrust out with her hand resting on it, the bent angle and sharp point of her elbow making an almost perfect triangle of bony flesh against the yellow custom paint job of my Subaru Outback. Her other hand holds the hand of her brother, not tightly but not casually either, the way a daisy holds on to its petals. "Maybe he doesn't want to be sold," I tell her. "Maybe he wants to stay here." "Then you could keep him. He can't do much now but when he gets older he could be like a slave for you." I look down at the little guy. The spray of freckles across his nose and the hand-me-down jeans with rips in the knees and the cuffs rolled up several times remind me of my own son, Clay, when he was that age. He turns twenty-four today. I have to remember to give him a call later. I don't make a big deal over his birthday now that he's grown. I don't let myself get emotional either, since the emotions surrounding his birth have always left me feeling torn up inside. I guess that's what happens when the best thing in your life is the result of the worst mistake of your life. I wasn't all that much older than this girl standing in front of me now when my dad dropped me off at the entrance of the Centresburg Hospital, already two hours into my contractions, and told me to call him when I was "done." Shannon was with us, sitting in the cab of the pickup crushed between the enormous globe of her sister's belly and the silent, hulking presence of our coal miner father who'd been pulled out of the damp, black earth midway through his shift in answer to my emergency call. Since he was going right back to work, he hadn't bothered to clean up or change out of his dirty coveralls. His face and hands were coated with rock dust: the crushed limestone sprayed inside mines to control the combustible coal dust. It gave his skin a bluish-white pallor, like someone who'd been frozen solid and dug out of a snowdrift. Shannon was this girl's age and full of the same sort of generalized contempt and misplaced confidence in her ability to not care about anything as long as she told herself nothing was worth caring about, but I remember she looked worried that day as I climbed down out of the truck wincing and breathing funny and cradling the baby still inside me. I couldn't tell if she was afraid for me or afraid for herself because she was going home with dad alone. "I don't believe in slavery," I tell the girl. "Besides, maybe he wants to stay with you." "I don't think so." "I think he's pretty attached to you." We both look at the boy this time. He doesn't have the exuberance of most children his age. He hasn't been fidgeting or whining or trying to get away. He stares back at us with the endlessly patient gaze of a sheep waiting at the gate to be let out or let in. "But he ain't mine. He's my mom's," she says. "He doesn't belong to you or your mom." I walk around to the driver's side of my car. They follow me. "He's not a dog. He's a person. You can't own another person. Although another person can own you. You'll learn about that when you start dating." "I already date." "Okay, enough." I hold up my hands in a sign of defeat. "This is more information than I need. If you don't have any money, what else do you have?" She opens up her grimy purse, pink with a jeweled kitten on it. I would have killed for a purse like that when I was her age although I never would have taken it outside the house for fear E.J. or some of the other guys would have made fun of me for being a sissy. She pokes through the meager contents with the tips of her fingers, which are polished in chipped purple: a cracked pink plastic Barbie wallet, a lipstick, a comb, a piece of notebook paper folded into a small square, a lighter shaped like a pig, and a handful of what looks like ordinary gravel. She gestures with her head toward the boy. "Kenny collects rocks." I take the lighter and flick it on. The flames come out the pig's nose. "The lighter," I state. "No way. I love that lighter. I just stole . . . I just bought it with my own money inside." "No lighter, no ride." It's her turn to size me up. She looks me over. I wonder what she thinks about my outfit, if she's being more generous than I was with hers. Ancient scuffed Frye harness boots, long bare legs, a camouflage miniskirt, olive drab tank top, cheap drugstore sunglasses, and a pink Stetson that Clay gave me two years ago as a Mother's Day gag gift that I was never supposed to wear: looks like she was dressed by a Vietnam vet with a penchant for banging middle-aged cowgirls. Her gaze leaves me and runs over the car. jolly mount cab is written on both sides but about a month ago, someone blacked out jolly and cab on the driver's side door and added the word me. It now reads mount me. I don't have any idea who the vandal is. I'm sure it was nothing personal. I've even taken my time getting it fixed. I tell myself it's because I don't have the money, but part of the reason is simple admiration and encouragement for the creative thought process behind it. When E.J. and I were in sixth grade and the Union Hall was still standing and hosting community events, a square dancing club called The Naughty Pines came to town to put on an exhibition. E.J. and I switched two letters and the next day the marquee read tonight only: the naughty penis. We thought we were the two most brilliant people alive. It was inevitable that we would be caught, since we bragged openly about what we had done. Eventually word spread throughout the school, and we were sent to the principal's office. I never did understand why our teachers were allowed to become involved, since the act didn't occur on school property or during school hours, but I guess they believed that, since I didn't have a mom to teach me right from wrong, they were responsible for disciplining me. Apparently, I've passed the girl's inspection because she hands me the lighter and opens the back door. My cell rings. "Jolly Mount Cab," I answer. "I need a cab to drive me from Harrisburg to Jolly Mount," a man's voice greets me. "There's not a single cab company here that will do it. One of the drivers I spoke to recommended you." "What'd he say?" "He said he thought you'd take the job." "No, that's not what I mean. What'd he say about me?" "He said he thought you'd take the job," he repeats. The girl crawls inside the car and motions for her brother to follow. Once he's seated beside her she makes him fasten his seat belt but doesn't put on her own. "What'd he really say about me?" I ask him. A brief silence. "He said you're attractive, although he didn't use the word 'attractive,' but I think that was the point he was trying to make." "Does that make you more eager to have me drive you?" "I doubt I'd be interested in you in that way." "Why not? Are you gay? Faithful? Celibate? Impotent?" "Picky." "Fair enough," I say. I'm trying to figure him out. His manner of speaking sounds almost rehearsed. There's not the slightest trace of any kind of a regional accent in his voice; he enunciates too well, and he uses very little inflection. He talks rapidly but he's also fond of dramatic pauses. He's sort of a cross between Captain Kirk and the guy who did the English voice-overs for all the old Kung Fu movies. My guess is he grew up talking one way and puts a lot of effort into not talking that way anymore. "Where are you exactly?" I ask him. "I'm here at this ridiculous, godforsaken excuse for an airport." "Harrisburg International?" "International? You can't even fly to New York from here." "That's true, but there's one flight to Canada." Another silence. "Can you pick me up or not?" "Yeah. Sure. I can pick you up. You realize it's a two-hour drive?" "Yes, I do. The other cab drivers enlightened me. Is it also true that there are no hotels in Jolly Mount?" "The nearest motel would be in Centresburg, about thirty miles from here." "Unbelievable." "What's your name, sir?" "Why do you need to know?" "Because I'm about to invest four hours of my life and sixty dollars worth of gas on the assumption that you're going to be there when I show up. The least you can do in return is tell me your name." He doesn't answer. "Fine. I'll just call you Sparky." "Gerald," he says sharply. "Gerald Kozlowski." He hangs up. I click my phone shut happily. A fare from the airport. Big bucks. Then I notice the two little ones in my back seat. "Sorry, kids," I tell them while opening the door and motioning for them to get out. "There's been a change in plans. I can't take you to the mall after all." Kenny does what he's told. The girl glares at me. "Why the hell not?" "It was a bad idea to begin with, now that I think about it. If I take you to the mall then you're going to be stranded at the mall. How will you get home?" She gets out and slams the door. She doesn't answer my question. "Where is home anyway?" I keep after her. "And what are you doing out by yourself in the middle of town on a Saturday morning?" "It ain't none of your business where our home is and we can be wherever we want to be. It's a free country." "So I've been told." She joins Kenny and takes up a stance next to him with her hands jabbed back on her hips. I notice her gaze flicker toward a red Radio Flyer wagon parked next to the front door of the convenience store. "Well, I guess you can't live too far away if you pulled Kenny in a wagon," I comment. "Where are your parents?" All I get from her in reply is hostile silence and sharp elbows. Kenny gives me the sheep stare. "Who are your parents?" Nothing. "Can I at least know your name?" She thinks about it. "Fanci." I know I've heard the name before. It's unusual enough that it sticks out in my mind, although having an adjective or noun for a name that conjures up images of pretty things isn't that strange around here. I went to school with a Taffeta Tate and a Sparkle Wisniewski. Clay briefly dated a girl named Dainty Frost who had a sister named Lacey. "What about a last name?" I ask. "Simms." "Is your dad Choker Simms?" "Yeah." "Well, that explains a lot," I say under my breath. "Do you know him?" she asks me. "Yes, I do." "You probably heard bad things about him because he was in jail but none of it's true. He was set up by a lady cop who had the hots for him and decided to ruin his life when he spurned her." I'm so stunned by this explanation I laugh out loud. "'Spurned'?" I practically choke on the word. "You know. Spurned. When somebody tells you they don't love you." "Your dad . . . ," I start to say, then stop as I look down into their little faces, hers daring me to say anything bad about their father so she can defend him and his full of genuine curiosity. She holds out her hand, palm up. "Gimme my lighter back." I give it to her. She returns it to her purse, grabs Kenny by the forearm, and stalks off. it takes all of two minutes for me to drive through downtown Jolly Mount. Aside from the Snappy's gas station and convenience store, there's a Subway, three bars, one church, a drive-thru branch of a bank, a red brick post office, and a two-story abandoned corner building that used to house a five-and-dime store, and an insurance agency. A corridor of tall, thin row homes, identical except for the amount of color and care spent on them, forms the outlying border. There's a house of flaking bubblegum pink, one of pale turquoise, one a fading canary yellow, and two painted a mint green--all the colors of a bucket of sidewalk chalk interspersed between the traditional whites and tans. Some are well tended; others appear to be uninhabited except for the lawn ornaments, and the limp curtains hanging at lopsided angles behind windows smoky with age and grime. I take the most direct route to the interstate even though I prefer driving the forsaken, twisting side roads where the worn-down, wooded mountains lie on all sides of me like the backs of slumbering giants. Excerpted from Sister Mine by Renée Raudman All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.