May 9, 2016
Hebert’s second novel (after The Boiling Season) is a gritty portrayal of Detroit as a crumbling industrial city that has become an economic and social wasteland, sparsely populated by unfortunate people who have nowhere else to go. The Motor City has been virtually abandoned by industries, businesses, and residents, “a landscape full of monuments to loss and oblivion,” leaving those few who remain resigned to despair. Hebert tells this story through the interactions of 11 major characters whose lives intersect in subtle and suspenseful ways. Dobbs is a hapless drifter unwillingly involved with human traffickers. Constance is a great-grandmother trying to coax a vegetable garden out of toxic soil. Michael is a carpenter with explosive ideas for cleansing the city. Mrs. Freeman is a corporate shill with a guilty conscience. Clementine is a 10-year-old girl with vacant neighborhoods as her playground. An insecure corporate security guard and five young, idealistic, inept anti-corporate urban terrorists round out this crafty morality tale of good people making bad decisions. Nobody pays any attention to these people; the five young terrorists can’t even get the cops to come to their amateur protest demonstrations. But then somebody starts blowing up empty buildings. Hebert wonderfully brings out his ensemble’s human qualities, whether they’re fearful, compassionate, or tenacious. Agent: Bill Clegg, Clegg Agency.
May 1, 2016
An ensemble novel set against the backdrop of a ruined and abandoned Detroit. Hebert's (The Boiling Season, 2012) sweeping tale follows the intersecting lives of a diverse cast of characters, each struggling in his or her own way to persevere. There's Dobbs, a dispassionate, insomniac college dropout who, looking to distance himself from his upbringing and align himself with "bottom-feeders" more suited for survival in a dying world, transports and harbors illegal aliens. There's a band of protesters, led by the bold and destructive McGee, whose attempts at dissent and demonstration fall far short of their expectations. There's Ruth Freeman, a powerful but jaded director of corporate communications at HSI--the remaining pillar of Detroit industry, producing everything from weapons and drones to toasters and fetal heart monitors--who to the protestors is a criminal and to her fellow HSI board members is a stubborn snag in their mission to desert the city. There's Darius, who is alternately loyal to HSI, where he works as a security guard, and aligned with the subversive movement; his dubious moral center is underlined by an affair with his teenage neighbor. There's Michael Boni, a lapsed carpenter living in his deceased grandmother's house, who dreams of demolishing Detroit's neglected buildings and growing flora in their place, an ambition inspired by the quiet garden work of his elderly neighbor, Constance. For Michael, "the lettuce was an opening salvo, a declaration of war." The most poignant and appealing of these characters are Constance and her great-granddaughter, Clementine. From nothing, with only sporadically helpful neighbors, Constance cultivates a lush crop in her backyard, opens a restaurant furnished with found goods, and is a taciturn, unapologetic force for community good. Written in evocative prose with careful detail, this is a veracious portrayal of a decimated city. It moves at an exciting pace, the various plot threads braiding rapidly. Most poignant is the insight offered about those fighting to amend the damage. These characters are flawed and more appealing for it. Perhaps Hebert intends to suggest that this is true of the city itself. An expansive yet intimate tale of the efforts made to save a decaying Detroit.
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June 1, 2016
Whether Detroit, Michigan, is a familiar stomping ground or merely conjures a vague connection with American midwestern industry and energy, Hebert's (The Boiling Season, 2012) powerful novel will produce chills. In the history of the world, great cities have risen to the challenges of their time and fallen after succumbing to the illusion of their own importance. In the U.S., no city characterizes this cycle as poetically as Detroit, gone bankrupt after it lost its foothold in the manufacturing industry. As depicted here, it is precisely that: a city that awakened one morning to find that nothing passes by so certainly or so cruelly as success. Now scrambling for viable options, Hebert's current residentsactivists, planners, takers, opportunists, and optimists still living in a city that looks war-guttedare undertaking to shake off the shroud of how-did-this-happen and discover renewed vigor. Hebert's tenacious prose, often as bleak as this all sounds, is nonetheless the metaphor for hanging on as it drives the narrative and brings characters like McGee, Michael Boni, Darius, Constance, and the rest to visceral life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)
February 15, 2016
Winner of the 2013 Friends of American Writers Award, Hebert's The Boiling Season addressed issues of social concern in taut, evocative language. Here he tells the story of devastated Detroit through interlocking characters, from persevering activists to a great-grandmother tending her garden to an idealistic carpenter. Hebert is currently the Jack E. Reese Writer-in-Residence at the University of Tennessee Libraries.
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