Scarecrow [Hardcover]

Bill Jabanoski (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2004

Starting in "The Storm Of The Century," The Great New England Blizzard of 1978, which the author, at age fifteen, and four other people who accompany him, all stranded and hopeless in the fury of the storm, somehow manage to survive "not by luck, nor by chance," the novel quickly hurtles the reader twenty-five years later into the present, where, as a forty year old, war weary journalist, Jabanoski tells the poignant story of the carnage, hellish misery, and hopelessness of both the American soldiers and the Iraqi civilians dying or crippled in the midst of George W. Bush’s "self-serving war."

Initially, the two stories, the survival of the blizzard a quarter of a century ago, and the horror of the War in Iraq, seem not to connect, but when they do, the result is one of the most powerful statements about inhumanity versus humanity, brutality versus brotherhood, and blind patriotism or fanatical religious belief versus our basic obligation to each other as human beings, perhaps since Orwell’s 1984.

Although certainly an indictment against the "genocidal" greed, lies, and complete disregard for life of the Bush administration, the power of this novel’s message will remain every bit as important even after Election Day has long since come and passed. For it is a novel about us, the world we will bequeath to our children, and how we can avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. Simply put, they will still be teaching this novel in high school and college classrooms fifty years from now.

Originally published in installments (many wired out of Iraq during the author’s time reporting on the war there) on the "Roadkill Weekly" Website between April and December of 2003, the novel appears here in book form for the first time. The timing of its publication, October 1, 2004, a month before the Presidential Election, could not be more appropriate.

- Craig Addams

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

"Roadkill" Bill Jabanoski {an affectionate nickname he picked up from friends in Key West for how much traveling he did and what he looked like when he came back from every corner of the globe}, probably best known, these days, for his hit CDS, A SPECIAL PLACE IN HELL - FOUR YEARS UNDER THE BOOT HEEL OF GEORGE W. BUSH and THE KEY WEST PARTY CD, is also the author of one of the most popular internet fiction columns in the world, ROADKILL WEEKLY, and known for the thousands of journalistic works he’s filed from everywhere from Southern Africa to the four months he spent reporting on the war in Iraq between March and June of last year. Although he was born and bred just outside of New York City, where he "cut his teeth" as a journalist as a crime reporter for one of the city’s dailies, he’s called Key West, Florida his home for over twenty years now.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 277 pages
• Publisher: Niawt Books (October 2004)
• ISBN-10: 0976262509
• ISBN-13: 978-0976262503
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,289,204 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's the Answer. IT HAS TO BE!, December 15, 2004

By 

Julie Collier (SF, NM, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Scarecrow (Hardcover)

When, on page 219, he brings together all the images you've overlooked while you were too busy involved in the great story and storytelling, this book astounds you. You start going back through the book and realizing it's been there all along, in the religious images, the images of greed, the images of things that throw off gigantic shadows but really aren't that big, and of course, the Scarecrow. It's the answer. It has to be, if we're going to survive. Then you continue on to the end and you get the chills because we haven't figured it out and probably never will.

I'm an avid reader, but I don't make pretentions to be as intensely well educated as Jabanoski is. The amazing thing about this though is that you don't have to be some great student of literature at all to get it. All you have to do is read this book with an open heart and a desire to see the world be a better place.

32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read this book like your life depends on it.., January 23, 2005

By 

Gen Res (America) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Scarecrow (Hardcover)

I just bought the book yesterday and finished it today. This book is written by Bill Jabanoski who has heroically went all over the world, from Central America, to Beirut, Africa and beyond to uncover important stories of our destructive foreign policy.

What is interesting is that in Central America (when we were funding the Contras in Nicaragua and the death squads in El Salvador who killed thousands of innocent people) Jabanoski writes everything he sees, yet only 25% of the information - the sugar coated "we are the good guys" news is sent back.

Here are some tidbits from the book, which I highlighted, which I think are very important:

1. 5,000 kids die everyday in Africa, mostly from preventable diseases such as malaria. We would only have to increase pennies for every hundred dollars of our money to provide those kids with medicine. However, I suppose, providing kids with medicines isn't "as cool as" throwing bombs on people and shooting at them non-discriminately as we are doing in Iraq.

2. When Jabanoski gets into the second part of the book, which is about Iraq, he not only blames politicians, the media and greedy corporations, he gives the American people a well-deserved chiding. While we sit here in our SUVs or worry about our kids, we couldn't care less that there are kids of a different skin color who follow a different religion dying in Iraq. Or the fact that their sewer system is messed up and they barely have any electricity.

3. "Some people don't thing about other people as one of theirs or one of ours. They only see people, just like themselves.

4. Americans need the strongest army in the world, because we have, individually, become the weakest willed people I know of.

5. This is from an Iraqi interpreter Bill meets:

"But now we have reduced ourselves to a realm ruled by the self-serving rich, such as the Saudis, or self-serving fanatics, all of whom use the Koran like a weapon to keep the common people from thinking any further than what the Mullahs tell them to think, just as your country has falled into the hands of the same type of people, only, from what I read, they do not waive the Bible in front of your people so much as they do your flag.

Again, this is from the same interpreter, Ahmed:

" When the Eleven-September attacks were made on your nation two years ago, we Shiites, we cried for your people. Most of the world cried for your people. Tell me, who cries for my people now? Even though there are most likely ten times more of them killed by your armies than died in the Eleven-September attacks? Does anyone in your country even care about this?

Read this book if you haven't already. Second - DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Innocent Iraqis and soldiers are being killed or injured while we are sitting here. For the self-serving ones who couldn't care less - think of it like this, the Iraq war has increased the number of terrorists ten-fold; normal Joes or Ahmeds have turned into terrorists like anybody would if they saw their families die. So try to stop this war, if not for anyone else's sake, for your own.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Most Important Book Of Our Time, March 23, 2005

By 

N. Yarborough (Boston, Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Scarecrow (Hardcover)

As a reviewer before me has already noted, when, on page 219, all of the seemingly incidental things we all ignore and never connect together suddenly all hit you at once, it was, to me, the single greatest moment of epiphany I've ever experienced in all the books I've ever read.

This is the single most important political document of our time, a damnation of the Bush administration and, probably more importantly, the American elite that control the hearts and minds of average Americans by fueling hate by fueling their fears.

However, to call it simply that would be doing Mr. Jabanoski a great disservice. He does not only offer protest and indignation. He provides an escape route for all of us although he, and I must reluctantly agree, doubts that we will ever choose to take it.

Then there is simply the mastery of great writing. Simply stated, if you believe "The Da Vinci Code" was a fascinating read, which it was, this book is a dozen times more fascinating, a hundred times better written, and a thousand times more important.