Blood Harvest

Brant Randall offers us a look at the events in one small rural New England town through the eyes of seven humans and two animals -- my .5 deduction for the book is because I found the animal viewpoints but unnecessary and disconcerting, pulling away from the emotional content of the over arching portrait of life in 1929. The actually time period is only two days of time but the events reach back into individual family histories, religious, racial and ethnic intolerance, and the looming financial crisis on the horizon. Heroes are few in this book as characters manipulate each other right and left in their attempts for business and political power. I really appreciated Randall's details on how people talked, how they thought and how they interacted. It felt historically possible and I could find characters such as Eulala Sprout and Ebeenezer Kauz to sympathize with among the manipulators and abusers. The main character, the one who might be a hero, Marshall Lawe, I just couldn't honestly connect to... he seemed a bit too distant but then he also seemed more honest than many of the characters. This was an interesting and entertaining novel to read plus it made me think about the past in a slightly more complex way.

Fortunately, a friend recommended the book, as I would have passed on it as too dark for my liking by the tone of the reviews I've read. This book has a sense of humor about the subject matter that makes it easy to digest. Distinct character voices add to the fun. A great read!

Lynch mobs - a group of people, blinded from logic and reason, seek out and execute a man as a group. What drives people to do this? "Blood Harvest" is the story of a small New England town. As an immigrant is found consensually sleeping with one of the hometown girls he is tossed off a bridge to drown - but his father saves him, only to hung up a few days later himself. When the authorities finally bring order back, they find the body of the wrongfully executed... and another. A deftly written thriller that will keep readers reading, "Blood Harvest" is highly recommended to community library fiction collections.

A compelling tale told from various POVs, pulling you deeper and deeper into the story as each character reveals more clues to why Nick DeCosta was hanged in the woods near this small New England town. There is a history lesson here, told in such a way, you think that maybe your history teacher forgot to mention a few facts way back when. Fascinating, too, are the characters you meet in this rural town. Marshal Lawe, the marshal of Peony Springs, short on education, but he makes up for it in orneriness. Then there's Bill Sykes, the wheeler-dealer prosecuting attorney who thinks he can finagle his way into the governor's office by inciting a riot and then being the one to squash it. But that only works if everybody is playing your game. Of course Jackie Sue, the headstrong young girl who leads men and boys astray and causes her own riot in town, adds heat to this smoldering pot. But my favorite characters are Chief and Kaw. Chief reminded me of the Mechanical Hound in Fahrenheit 451, except this one is real and has personality. You get inside his head and it's a hoot. Kaw is another off-the-wall character, this time a crow whose speech pattern captures the black heart of that diabolical fowl. Over all, this was a terrific read.

What drives a New England town in 1928 to lynch a man? Nick DeCosta embodies the immigrant success story. His skill as a wine grower makes him a fortune as a moonshiner during Prohibition. It puts him at odds with the `shine sales of the MacKay clan, even though he's wed to their wild youngest daughter. Is that the real reason he is lynched? And why is there a second corpse in the woods? With this set-up it's hard to know what to expect from this first novel by Brant Randall. What I didn't expect was a stunning, unique story of family feuds and bigotry in small town New England. Or a shocking tale so eloquently told, by not one central point of view character, but nine - all integral to the story and each telling it from their own perspective. While some might be put off by the first-person narrative from so many different characters, the unusual technique is what makes this book so effective. Randall's style is fluid, mesmerizing, and compelling, lush in history and sparse on setting. He purposely spares detail in the surroundings, placing focus instead on the account of events as told by those who lived them, providing an intimate look into the lives of the townspeople and the dynamics of their relationships. Each voice rings so true to its own nature that you can hear each character putting his/her/its own spin on the retelling of events, fitting a few pieces at a time into the larger puzzle until the complete picture is sitting before you in all its deeply rich - if unsettling - glory. Brant Randall has set the bar high with this superbly crafted debut.