{"id":5436,"date":"2024-01-08T08:09:51","date_gmt":"2024-01-08T16:09:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=5436"},"modified":"2024-01-08T08:09:51","modified_gmt":"2024-01-08T16:09:51","slug":"amy-pease-northwoods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/amy-pease-northwoods\/","title":{"rendered":"Amy Pease: Northwoods"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This debut by Amy Pease takes on a lot.\u00a0 Her flawed hero, Eli North, is a vet with PTSD and a drinking problem.\u00a0 He\u2019s lost the job he loved, and his wife has left him \u2013 plus he works on sufferance for his mother, the sheriff, at the understaffed sheriff\u2019s department in tiny Shaky Lake, Wisconsin.\u00a0 His co-workers don\u2019t think much of him but his mother is doing her very best to pull him forward.\u00a0 He defeats her efforts at almost every turn as addicts tend to do.<\/p>\n

As the book opens, Eli ignores a call from work and when he does get to it, it\u2019s a noise complaint.\u00a0 He finds an empty resort cabin with the music playing full blast.\u00a0 He turns it off, and, checking out the nearby dock, finds a boat tied up with a dead body inside.\u00a0 His first panicked thought is that it\u2019s the body of his boy, Andy, but he sees the boy in the boat is too old \u2013 he\u2019s a teen.\u00a0 It also becomes clear that the girl he was with is missing.<\/p>\n

As Eli and his mother investigate the case one way and another, the fact that the dead boy seems to have been a good kid, trying to care for his addict mother (he even knows how to administer Narcan), is something confirmed by everyone they talk to. The sheriff tried to check in on him as she was able to, and she\u2019s devastated by his death.\u00a0 The missing girl, however, takes precedence.<\/p>\n

This book is interesting as it\u2019s told from the point of view of an addict, the ultimate unreliable narrator.\u00a0 Eli is struggling and the reader sees and feels his struggles, most heartbreakingly, I think the struggles he has trying to maintain a relationship with his 8-year-old son, Andy. There\u2019s obviously a good, intelligent investigator under cover of the alcohol.\u00a0 I think the true triumph of this novel is in creating a character who, despite obvious flaws, is still someone the reader can relate to, root for, and even like.\u00a0 I wanted him to succeed.<\/p>\n

The mystery revolves around the missing girl and the drug her pharmacist rep father is about to help launch that\u2019s supposed to stop opioid addiction.\u00a0 Obviously, any company that could manufacture that kind of drug would make billions of dollars.\u00a0 The stakes are both high, and personal, with the various addicts Pease writes about giving the reader an emotional investment in the outcome.<\/p>\n

That said I still felt the resolution was somewhat predictable.\u00a0 I rarely try and figure out an ending, preferring to be surprised, but this ending was pretty apparent even to me.\u00a0 I did like the writing, the setting, and the characters.\u00a0 The Wisconsin Northwoods felt very much like Northern Michigan where I spent my childhood summers.\u00a0 That layer of nostalgia along with the poignancy of the main character\u2019s struggles made this a worthy read. —\u00a0Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This debut by Amy Pease takes on a lot.\u00a0 Her flawed hero, Eli North, is a vet with PTSD and a drinking problem.\u00a0 He\u2019s lost the job he loved, and his wife has left him \u2013 plus he works on sufferance for his mother, the sheriff, at the understaffed sheriff\u2019s department in tiny Shaky Lake, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1486,1482,1218,1484,1485,1483,128,1276],"class_list":["post-5436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-addiction","tag-amy-pease","tag-debut","tag-emily-bestler-books","tag-north-country-noir","tag-northwoods","tag-ptsd","tag-robin-agnew"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5436"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5438,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5436\/revisions\/5438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}