This one is difficult to read for its raw descriptions of the real racism of small town USA. Although it is set in the 1970s, it might still be relevant today in some places. It smacks of Brokeback Mountain and the violent backlash against people who don't follow the prescribed norm. The only thing I can't fully accept is that the Japanese-American girl felt empathy for the Garretts from the beginning. More real would be if she joined the rest of the town in seeing the couple as outsiders, people even less accepted into the group than she was. She could grow to understand that the Garretts had just as much right to live their lives as anyone, but I dont think she would have started out that way. Perhaps if the character were older it would have worked better. A 16-year-old would have her own thoughts and be able to see the idiocy of the situation, but not so much a nine-year-old who would be much more interested in finding a way to be accepted by the group. A fictional memoir about a nine-year-old Japanese-American girl and the years 1973-1974 that she spent with her grandparents in a very right-wing town in rural Wisconsin. Abandoned by her parents and subjected to sometimes violent racism on the part of both children and adults, Michelle bonds with her grandfather despite his racist beliefs. Her best friend in Brett, her grandfather’s hunting dog, past his prime but able to protect Michelle and provide her much-needed companionship and acceptance. Tragedy stalks the small town of Deerhorn when a Black couple arrives: the husband teaches in Michelle’s school, and his wife is a clinic nurse. The level of cruel hatred this evokes seems alien in today’s world, where most racism comes out in the form of cynical jokes, but in Deerhorn it’s very real and ends up in violence. As both witness/victim and participant in the final confrontation, Michelle learns a sad lesson about the darkness within her own soul. Revoyr does a fine job of setting the scene and describing the conflicts, but Michelle’s dawning awareness of the Savagery of Man is a little too precocious.
Do You like book Wingshooters (2011)?
The story did not seem to get going until the end. Well written, but a slow plot.
—chantal549
Difficult read. Hard subject matter. Touched my soul.
—Denise
"Fiction: Unheard Stories" panelist at 2013 FoB.
—Angel
