Rick Skwiot
Blank Slate Press/Amphorae Publishing
9781943075935 $18.95 Paperback/$9.99 eBook
www.amphoraepublishing.com
Twelve-year-old A.J. Nowak’s life with his aunt and uncle has been predictably supportive. He obeys them easily, fearful of being sent back home to live with his mother after his father’s death in the war. But when he discovers a body under the ice of the frozen lake he’s ice skating, everything changes, sending him on a lifelong journey.
The novel moves back and forth in time, from the late 1920s to the 1950s, as events unfold. These fluctuations are included in chapter headings that make their transitions easy to understand as Hazel Robinson, A.J., and others face a blackmailer, unexpected truths, and indications that revenge may be in order.
From gangs to trust fund influences, the efforts of a single mom to protect her son, and the legacy left by dangerous associations that result in A.J.’s recruitment in a deadly affair, Rick Skwiot spins a complex yarn that involves generations of a family in events that impact their legacy and place in the world.
As an evolving adult, A.J. struggles with his bootlegger father’s legacy and his mother’s self-destructive ways. The question becomes one of not just survival and life purpose, but unshackling himself from the past.
Skwiot creates a story that develops different characters in thought-provoking ways. The plot is particularly strong in how its connections between past choices and present lives play out, creating bonds and dysfunction that emerge from and buffet the persona of a boy who must acknowledge these family ties to overcome them.
The vision of a “wandering warrior” who searches for the meaning and place called ‘home’ is particularly evocative, tying together many threads of intrigue and discovery to create a story not just memorable, but thoroughly compelling.
This is why libraries should consider The Bootlegger’s Bride a top pick for their collections. It embodies and embraces world’s events from the 1920s to the 1970s that impact and grow its protagonist, propeling him in new directions.
Packed with mystery, intrigue, psychological twists and turns, and many different kinds of discovery, The Bootlegger’s Bride’s world is easy to enter and hard to leave.
