St. Martin's Press

The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman’s Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster

Filed Under: Books Read

The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman’s Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster

The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman's Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster by Sarah Krasnostein
Published by St. Martin's Press on April 10, 2018
Pages: 288
Format: ebook
Genres: Biography
See it @ Goodreads


Synopsis

Winner of the Victorian Prize for Literature, Sarah Krasnostein’s The Trauma Cleaner:
One Woman’s Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster
 is the fascinating biography of one of the people responsible for tidying up homes in the wake of natural—and unnatural—catastrophes and fatalities.

Homicides and suicides, fires and floods, hoarders and addicts. When properties are damaged or neglected, it falls to Sandra Pankhurst, founder of Specialized Trauma Cleaning (STC) Services Pty. Ltd. to sift through the ashes or sweep up the mess of a person’s life or death. Her clients include law enforcement, real estate agents, executors of deceased estates, and charitable organizations representing victimized, mentally ill, elderly, and physically disabled people. In houses and buildings that have fallen into disrepair, Sandra airs out residents’ smells, throws out their weird porn, their photos, their letters, the last traces of their DNA entombed in soaps and toothbrushes.

The remnants and mementoes of these people’s lives resonate with Sandra. Before she began professionally cleaning up their traumas, she experienced her own. First, as a little boy, raised in violence and excluded from the family home. Then as a husband and father, drag queen, gender reassignment patient, sex worker, small businesswoman, and trophy wife. In each role she played, all Sandra wanted to do was belong.

The Trauma Cleaner is the extraordinary true story of an extraordinary person dedicated to making order out of chaos with compassion, revealing the common ground Sandra Pankhurst—and everyone—shares with those struck by tragedy.

Gods of Howl Mountain

Filed Under: Books Read

Gods of Howl Mountain

Gods of Howl Mountain by Taylor Brown
Published by St. Martin's Press on March 20th 2018
Pages: 304
See it @ Goodreads


Synopsis

In Gods of Howl Mountain, award-winning author Taylor Brown explores a world of folk healers, whiskey-runners, and dark family secrets in the high country of 1950s North Carolina.

Bootlegger Rory Docherty has returned home to the fabled mountain of his childhood - a misty wilderness that holds its secrets close and keeps the outside world at gunpoint. Slowed by a wooden leg and haunted by memories of the Korean War, Rory runs bootleg whiskey for a powerful mountain clan in a retro-fitted '40 Ford coupe. Between deliveries to roadhouses, brothels, and private clients, he lives with his formidable grandmother, evades federal agents, and stokes the wrath of a rival runner.

In the mill town at the foot of the mountains - a hotbed of violence, moonshine, and the burgeoning sport of stock-car racing - Rory is bewitched by the mysterious daughter of a snake-handling preacher. His grandmother, Maybelline “Granny May” Docherty, opposes this match for her own reasons, believing that "some things are best left buried." A folk healer whose powers are rumored to rival those of a wood witch, she concocts potions and cures for the people of the mountains while harboring an explosive secret about Rory’s mother - the truth behind her long confinement in a mental hospital, during which time she has not spoken one word. When Rory's life is threatened, Granny must decide whether to reveal what she knows...or protect her only grandson from the past.

With gritty and atmospheric prose, Taylor Brown brings to life a perilous mountain and the family who rules it.

It took me a while to work my way through Gods of Howl Mountain; I just couldn’t get into this book.  As beautifully written as the book was, there were times when I thought the words got in the way detracting from the story.

The story takes place in the 1950’s, Rory, the main character, returns home from the Korean Ware with a wooden leg and few job opportunities.  Rory ends up running liquor for the local bootlegger.  In the 1930’s the government created the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) and flooded acres of land depriving thousands of people their homesteads.   This is the backdrop for the book.

I just felt that the characters were too stereotypical.  There is a rich history of Appalachia that I really didn’t get a feel for in this book.