Familial dynamics are complicated and messy--even more so when there is a death in the family.
A deeply moving story about a young woman who inherits an ostrich
ranch and must fight family strife and dysfunction.
April
Dávila's first novel is wise, moving and beautifully rendered. She
sets 142 Ostriches on Wishbone Ranch, an ostrich
farm in Sombra, a remote California town entrenched in the Mojave Desert.
The heroine, 24-year-old Tallulah Jones, is ready to fly the coop
to take a Forest Service job in Montana when her Grandma Helen dies in a
mysterious car crash. She is the person who rescued 13-year-old Tallulah from
her irresponsible, alcoholic mother in Oakland, Calif., and brought her to live
on the ostrich ranch 11 years ago. The news derails and defers Tallulah's
plans. All along, Helen had groomed Tallulah to take over the 50-year-old
ranch. She was adamantly opposed to her granddaughter's plans to escape to
Montana. This leaves Tallulah to question the timing of her grandmother's
death: Was it really an accident?
Helen's absence reunites and unsettles the extended family. This
includes Tallulah's estranged mother, Laura; aunt Christine, a level-headed
wife and mother who lives nearby; and erratic recovering meth-addict uncle
Steve. When everyone learns that Helen has bequeathed the ostrich farm to
Tallulah, emotions and rebelliousness run high in the family--and in the
ostrich flock, when the sensitive birds suddenly stop laying eggs.
Contentiousness further escalates when Tallulah considers selling the farm.
She is a young woman faced
with difficult choices in her quest to rise above the perils of familial
dysfunction. The result, Dávila's stellar debut, is infused with richly
drawn characters, tightly focused suspense and authentic detail about farm and
desert life.
Kensington
Books, $15.95 Paperback
9781496724700,
272 pages
Publication
Date: February 25, 2020
NOTE: This review is a reprint
and is being posted with the permission of Shelf
Awareness. To read this review on Shelf
Awareness: Reader's Edition (March
24, 2020), link HERE