Joan Dempsey's New Novel Gets Raves from Reviewer Karen Dodd

A POWERFUL BOOK FOR OUR TIMES

This Is How It Begins, A Novel

by Joan Dempsey

She Writes Press, October 2017

ISBN 978-1631523083

Paperback $16.95; E-Book $9.95

Fiction: Literary, contemporary, political, LGBTQ

http://thisishowitbeginsnovel.com/

Get Your Copy Here 

Reviewed by Karen Dodd, author of Deadly Switch: A Stone Suspense , originally for Amazon
5-Star Review

I absolutely loved this book! I literally couldn't put it down. At the same time, I didn't want it to end. Everything about the story was exquisite: the rich, beautifully developed characters, the simultaneous sub-plots (which were tied together seamlessly) and the obvious research that went into the writing. I couldn't help thinking how very timely this story is in today's political and social atmosphere.

I was fortunate to be an advance reader for Joan Dempsey’s This Is How It Begins, a novel about an eighty-five-year-old Polish American art professor, Ludka Zeilonka, her family, students, and a mysterious man whose memory has haunted her for sixty years.

The story, set in 2009, but with skillfully written bits of backstory, grabbed me by page four and never let up. Without slowing the pace, Dempsey takes the time  to create multi-dimensional characters, as well as a strong sense of place and setting. Somehow, she has created characters and situations that could easily be defined as “good” or “bad,” without imparting judgment or suggesting to the reader how they should feel. Just the opposite; I found myself challenging my own tendency to see things as black or white. Besides entertaining us, the author’s uncanny ability to expose truly awful modern-day and World War II injustices, and yet remain unbiased, has kept me thinking about this story long after I finished reading it.

I recommend this book to anyone, regardless of the genre they might normally read. I’m normally a consumer of mystery/thrillers but This Is How It Begins has elements of literary fiction, historical fiction, modern-day political and social issues—and yes, it has a compelling mystery to it!

I am thrilled that This Is How It Begins has been accepted as a must-read for our book club this year!

MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

	Joan Dempsey Author and Writing Teacher THIS IS HOW IT BEGINS, a novel m: 207-310-0365 w: thisishowitbeginsnovel.come: joan@joandempsey.com
HEAR ME READ AN EXCERPT FROM "THIS IS HOW IT BEGINS"

MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG

 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is her most recent How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically (http://bit.ly/GreatBkReviews ). This blog is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

Fiction Features Historical Characters' Take on Politics

Title: Founding Fathers Know Best:

Subtitle: Is the President Leading the Country in the Wrong Direction?

Author: Ross Edward Puskar
Website: www.foundingfathersknowbest.com
Genre: Political Fiction
ISBN-10: 1936449226

Selected Blurbs:

Founding Fathers Know Best is an engaging satire that delivers on its mission. Puskar presents an entertaining, educational and stimulating read that offers a creative and fresh way to think about the problems our country faces: how would past Presidents counsel Obama on today's issues? The spirits of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison return to the White House to offer their expertise and insights while supported by other past Presidents and the "Friends Club" (which includes colorful characters from Winston Churchill to Abigail Adams to Ben Franklin.)

FFKB is a sharp presentation of today's political issues through a fascinating historical lens. Great for those who love history - and for those who usually don't, well, you never knew history could be so fascinating! I was captivated and couldn't put it down. Puskar's passion and patriotism are infectious. As the election nears, this is a "must read."

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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using this little green retweet widget :

Political Thriller Important Study in Culture

Title: The HomeGrown: Narrative of a conversion
Author: Harry Deshpande
Author's Website: www.thehomegrown.info
Genre: Political thriller
ISBN: 1460998316



When recent college graduate Anwar, a Muslim born in Denmark, marries Nahgma, an Indian Muslim, her prosperous father is keen to celebrate the union by treating them to a honeymoon in Hawaii. However, Anwar's father has a markedly different idea in mind to launch their marriage: a visit to the family homeland of Pakistan to acquaint the new bride with Pashtun culture. Reluctantly agreeing, Anwar finds himself in the province of Quetta, and in the forbidding company of Hamid, a member of his extended family who has a palpable madness in his eyes.

Regrettably, this meeting will forever alter Anwar's worldview. When he takes up Hamid's offer to visit a site of American attack as proof that the United States is targeting innocents, Anwar lands in the middle of a skirmish between American Special Forces and the jihadist elements. From there, one traumatic event after another calls into question Anwar's accepted Danish mores, his relationship with his new bride, and his comprehension of Denmark's complicity to Pakistani atrocities at the hands of Americans.

From there, rigorous Jihadist brainwashing quickly transforms a benign Western accountant into an avowed Muslim with a new wife, for whom he has a passion that even surprises him. With that love rendered asunder, Anwar now has the fire to enact the unimaginable, right in his once-beloved Denmark.

With each turn, The Homegrown charts the grave and all-too-common trajectory from world citizen to public enemy, casting crucial light on why terrorists succeed with their message of hatred, and why the United States may be losing in the war of propaganda.

The story is told through Anwar's eyes; fundamentally, it is the story of the definition, breaking, and re-making of his character. Thus he moves from being a more or less vague, dissatisfied, vacillating, and anonymous character to an equally anonymous character, albeit re-made and somewhat hardened in the mold of a terrorist. The irony at the heart of the story is that, in the end, Anwar is no more his own man than he was at the outset, but his closely mentored suffering, combined with his exposure to an exotic and seductive religiosity that appeals to his weak and sentimental nature, makes him an ideal weapon in the hands of higher-ups who, like officers of every stripe, nationality, and era remain safely behind the lines.

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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using this little green retweet widget :

Political Thriller Highly Praised

ETA - Estimated Time of Arrest

A novel by Delphine Pontvieux
Author's Web site: http://www.missnyet.com
Genre: ThrillerMiss Nyet Publishing
ISBN: 9780984217601
Winner of Indie Excellence Book Award 2011 - thriller category
Also 2010 recipient of French in Chicago community award in the Arts andculture category

Review by: Jason Pettus for the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography

Rrating: 8.9 of 10: 8.9: 9.4 for fans of political thrillers

As I've said here several times before, I think it unfair to directly compare the worth of a book by a full-time writer on a major press with one by a part-time self-publishing author, if for no other reason than the tremendous amount of editorial advantages held by the former -- after all, a full-time author signed to a large publishing company will have at least a full-time editor, copy editor, proofreader and agent at their disposal, all of them making fine-tuned changes to that manuscript that a self-published one simply doesn't receive, not to mention the entire army of student volunteers that full-time writers sometimes have if they are a professor as well, which they are in so many cases. So it's always a real delight to come across a book like Delphine Pontvieux's ETA: Estimated Time of Arrest; because although you should be aware from the start that it's not much more than a beach-and-airport political thriller, it's a good enough one that it could literally be picked up right this second by Random House for a million-copy print run with no changes needed, a rare occurrence for a book like this which is basically one step above being self-published. (So that is, it's put out by an actual company called Miss Nyet, but which was started by the author specifically to put out this book, the situation that many people are referring to when they use the term "basement press.")

And in fact I suspect one of the reasons this book is so effective is that it's set in a milieu that's rarely discussed here in the US; that of the Basque separatists who live in the borderland between Spain and France, a place that the French-born, globetrotting Pontvieux (now a Chicagoan) is obviously quite familiar with, and which turns out makes for an almost perfect setting in which to base an exciting political potboiler. For those who need a little primer (and forgive me if I get some of this wrong -- I'm getting most of my info from the novel itself), you can think of the situation in Basque in much the same terms as the more well-known Northern Ireland; for a long time a tiny independent nation surrounded by the various Great Powers (much like its nearby neighbors Monaco and Luxembourg), during the fascist Franco years it was taken over by Spain and subjected to a brutal process of assimilation, which like the Irish Republican Army (or IRA) inspired the formation of a paramilitary nationalist organization, known there as the ETA. But by the 1990s, twenty years after the fall of the Franco regime, a compromise of sorts had been struck, which gave the Basque region an autonomous political status while still officially remaining a part of Spanish and French territory, with an end to imperialistic hostilities and the official public right again to celebrate Basque history and culture; and again, much like the IRA, it was at this point that even more and more locals started questioning the effectiveness or even need of a continued ETA, making them much more controversial and not nearly as automatically supported by separatists as when they were fighting literal fascists hellbent on destroying them.

And like the best political thrillers, Pontvieux takes no official sides in ETA, but rather uses the complex situation itself to tell an epic and far-reaching story, essentially centered around a young good-guy named Lorenzo Izcoa, swept up as a teen into the romanticism of the paramilitary movement but then eventually falsely accused of blowing up a police station, during a mass protest that turned chaotic. Like the early work of Tom Clancy, then (which I happen to like a lot), Pontvieux uses Izcoa's situation to examine a whole series of communities and locations related to the issue of Basque independence -- from rural Mexico where he spends time as a fugitive, to the alps of southern France where he is brought in by the group to do one last favor, from a mountain hippie community full of environmental activists to the weary police inspectors of big-city Espana. Pontvieux uses all these settings to examine the issue of Basque separatism and terrorist violence from all kinds of different angles, thankfully enfolding these more philosophical issues into the action itself, instead of simply lecturing us like so many mediocre political thrillers do; and along the way, she bases an important aspect of the plot on her personal love for freehand rock-climbing, a natural addition within the beautiful yet treacherous mountain terrain of southern France and northern Spain where our story largely takes place.

Now, like I said, this is a genre project through and through, and you will need to be an existing fan of people like John LeCarre to have even a chance of enjoyingETA; but as far as that's concerned, this is definitely on the high end of the quality scale for that genre, a quickly-paced page-turner that I imagine most fans of political thrillers will find themselves flying through. What a great week it always is when I get a chance to stumble across a book like this, one that far exceeds both my expectations and its publishing circumstances. It comes highly recommended today to those who are fans of such work.

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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using this little green retweet widget :

The Plight of Scientists Revealed in New Work of Fiction

Title: ConvergenceAuthor: Christopher Turner
Website: www.convergence-cpt.com
Download book from www.ebook.com/eBooks/eBooks/Literature/Convergence (1st 15 pages are free)
A limited number of free copies of Convergence are available. Send e-mail to Christopher Turner at general@convergence-cpt.com if you wish to have a free copy for review (please mention where you came across the book).
Genre: Science Fiction, Politics
ISBN:(eBook)


Written by a scientist for a main-stream audience, Convergence documents the surprisingly cut-throat world of science and reflects the real-world experiences of tens of thousands of young researchers everywhere. There are four main storylines, each involving a woman seemingly unrelated to the other three. Convergence begins by slowly taking the reader into the world of science and discovery, an apparently benign culture full of supportive people. However, despite the moral purity of the four main protagonists, sinister undercurrents undermine each storyline as the novel progresses. Thus, although starting out purely as a science mystery, Convergence develops into a slow-burning political drama.

At the core of the novel are ethical and moral issues that are frequently revisited throughout the book, echoing similar themes contained within The Demon Haunted World and Contact (Carl Sagan). However, at times Convergence has the convoluted but fast-paced storyline of The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown).

Unless books like Convergence make it out into the mainstream, the plight of our future scientists will likely never change. Certainly, a novel such as Convergence is long, long overdue.


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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've loved. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by author names, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the index handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.