Mike Shea on the month’s new releases
Thomas Zigal
The White League
Toby Press
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In THOMAS ZIGAL’s sophisticated thriller THE WHITE LEAGUE (Toby Press), New Orleans coffee magnate Paul Blanchard peeks beneath the Mardi Gras masks of his fellow captains of industry and discovers a secret society still fighting for segregation long after its antecedent—the real-life White League—was believed disbanded in 1877. Blanchard, cut from a more liberal cloth, keeps his distance until a blackmail scheme forces him into an unwelcome alliance. Zigal is slow out of the starting gate, and a few early scenes ring a bit hollow. But once he finds his rhythm, the blend of historical background with edgy characters and subplots creates a rich and satisfying brew.
Nanci Kincaid
As Hot As It Was You Ought To Thank Me
Back Bay Books
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Secrets are hard to keep in a small town like Pinetta, Florida, and a devastating hurricane further lays bare the private lives of Pinetta’s families in AS HOT AS IT WAS YOU OUGHT TO THANK ME (Back Bay Books), a jewel of a novel by Austinite NANCI KINCAID. Blossoming thirteen-year-old Berry Jackson serves as Kincaid’s eyes and ears (think Harper Lee’s Scout Finch) in this note-perfect tale about the summer of 1960, when the sweltering hamlet was turned upside down—literally by the storm and figuratively by the unexplained disappearances of Pastor Lyons; Berry’s father, Ford Jackson; and Rennie Miller, a stunningly pretty woman-child from a dirt-poor family. Throw in chain gangs, snakes, sex, and a hint of nostalgia, and the result is a novel that’s tough, tender, and mysterious all at once.
H. Joaquin Jackson with David Marion Wilkinson
One Ranger
UT Press
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As a memoir, ONE RANGER (UT Press) is all over the map, but, oh, the places you’ll go in this collection of anecdotes from retired Texas Ranger H. JOAQUIN JACKSON, with DAVID MARION WILKINSON. Jackson serves as a folksy but savvy tour guide to a career that stretched from 1966 to 1993 and from a prison riot shoot-out at Carrizo Springs to a horrific homicide in Big Bend’s Colorado Canyon, with countless stops in between. Jackson painstakingly argues that he’s simply telling “one ranger’s” story from his personal perspective. But the writing smacks of the truths that are hard-won from a lifetime of dealing out justice—sometimes on horseback, like the Lone Ranger used to do—in a lonesome terrain where your word is only as good as the gun and the reputation that back it up.
