{"id":569,"date":"2012-06-03T10:22:40","date_gmt":"2012-06-03T16:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=569"},"modified":"2012-06-03T10:22:40","modified_gmt":"2012-06-03T16:22:40","slug":"bryan-gruley-the-skeleton-box","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/bryan-gruley-the-skeleton-box\/","title":{"rendered":"Bryan Gruley: The Skeleton Box"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I guess I believe in doing my best, trying to be a good guy, be nice to my mom, take care of the people I love.\u00a0 Is that good enough?<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>One of my favorite things about selling books is watching an author grow not just career-wise, but grow as a writer.\u00a0 Each book of Bryan Gruley\u2019s is better than the last, and this third in his Gus Carpenter series really hits it out of the park.<\/p>\n

His first novel, Starvation Lake<\/em>, established Gruley\u2019s character.\u00a0 Gus has come back to Starvation Lake from a big time Detroit paper to run the tiny Pilot<\/em>.\u00a0 The balance of kinship, friendship, and community ties and history are finely drawn in the first two novels (the second is The Hanging Tree<\/em>), but in this third installment Gruley goes to the heart of the matter: family.<\/p>\n

Usually a book that has lots of hockey in it isn\u2019t one that will make me cry, but this book really got me.\u00a0 The amount of hockey in the books (a personal and life long passion of Gruley\u2019s) has been declining, just as Gruley the storyteller amps up his game.\u00a0 This one has the least amount of hockey, and there\u2019s a redemptive quality to it.\u00a0 It also is tied into the essential story line, so the book without the hockey wouldn\u2019t make sense.\u00a0 And that\u2019s how it should be.<\/p>\n

Hockey of course gives a specific flavor and zip to the stories, and a real note of authenticity.\u00a0 In this book, though, the true focus is on Gus\u2019s mother.\u00a0 Gus speeds to his mother\u2019s house in the opening scenes to discover that her best friend, Phyllis, has been attacked and rushed to the hospital and his mother in a state of shock.<\/p>\n

Gruley unsentimentally lays out his mother\u2019s increasing memory related struggles; she has good days and bad days, but the death of her best friend begins to bring the past to life, as does her friend\u2019s last word.\u00a0 Gus\u2019 love for his mother is clear; she pushes him to investigate more.\u00a0 Helping Gus is his crusty ace reporter, Luke Whistler, who hustles the story for all he\u2019s worth.<\/p>\n

It becomes evident early on in the story that whatever happened to Phyllis is related somehow to the Catholic Church and the long ago disappearance of a nun.\u00a0 Gruley bases the bones of his story on a true incident (see Mardi Link\u2019s fine Isadore\u2019s Secret<\/em>) where a nun disappeared and a long cloud of suspicion settled in over the parish.\u00a0 While Gruley utilizes the bare bones concept, there the similarity ends.\u00a0 Like any good story teller, he twists the narrative to suit the needs of the story he has chosen to tell.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s really powerful and moving is the connection not only between Gus and his mother, but his mother\u2019s connection to her long time best friends, both of whom are now dead.\u00a0 As Gus races toward a resolution, one his mother has nudged him into finding, he discovers things even she didn\u2019t know, though the ultimate revelation really belongs to her.\u00a0 The way Gruley honors this character without hitting the reader over the head with it is really well done.<\/p>\n

The details of life in Michigan \u2013 down to the Better Made potato chips served up at the local bar \u2013 add lots to the story.\u00a0 So do the hockey details, which are just enough, and just specific enough, to give you a real flavor of the ice.\u00a0 This is a wonderfully told story and a moving novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I guess I believe in doing my best, trying to be a good guy, be nice to my mom, take care of the people I love.\u00a0 Is that good enough? One of my favorite things about selling books is watching an author grow not just career-wise, but grow as a writer.\u00a0 Each book of Bryan … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-michigan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":571,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569\/revisions\/571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}