3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A MESMERIZING TALE, February 7, 2004
Pulse pounding suspense and lyrical affirmations of setting are not at all antithetic in William Hoffman's extraordinary 11th novel, Tidewater Blood. An explosive opening crackles into a mesmerizing tale of treachery and revenge, as a hunted man seeks to save himself by probing his haunted past. Set in the bountifully vernal Virginia countryside and the craggy cliffs of West Virginia's coal mining area, here is Southern exposure with a sharp Southern twist.
The patrician LeBlanc clan, proudly descended from gentrified Huguenot stock, gathers annually to celebrate themselves. On this, their 250th anniversary, they have again dressed in antebellum costume to share an opulent feast on the plantation mansion's portico - a meal never tasted as the porch suddenly explodes killing the eldest son and his family.
Immediately suspect is Charley LeBlanc, the family's miscreant son. A dishonorably discharged Vietnam veteran and former resident of Leavenworth, Charley has seceded from civilization, foraging for food near the makeshift he inhabits on a Chesapeake Bay inlet.
Brought in by the police who try to coerce a confession from him, Charley is reluctantly represented by a young court appointed attorney. When it becomes clear that he may pay for crimes he did not commit, one of the scruffiest, most emotionally scarred, yet deeply affecting heroes in contemporary fiction takes off to find the real killer.
During the ensuing odyssey, with the law nipping hungrily at his heels, Charley relies on his war taught skills: "I'd learned to nest keeping part of myself alert - an outer fringe of consciousness that sensed movement and alien sounds in darkness." His quest takes him to the mountainous West Virginia coal mining area, to a nearly abandoned town where his father oversaw a mining operation during World War II.
While Mr. Hoffman's narrative skills are abundant his character definition is superb. We meet an aged, independent backwoods woman, the memorable Aunt Jessie Arbuckle, who has a reason to help Charley. "Had seven children, all gone and spread to the four winds, " she tells him. "The last I heard from was Jacob, the youngest. Lives in Seattle and sent me a Christmas present, a GE toaster, and I got no electric. You chew?"
There is Blackie, the "he done me wrong" disfigured honky-tonk proprietress, another of life's secessionists. "I tell you one thing," she vows, "I don't use the word love no more." Add a grizzled mountain hermit who lives by stealing copper rigging, and a host of others, cinematic cameos all.
As Charley solves conundrum after conundrum to reveal the real killer, he also unearths some long buried secrets about the aristocratic LeBlancs and about himself.
Praiseworthy in every respect, this harrowing adventure captures readers with the opening page and holds them spellbound until the closing sentence. To call this tale a first-rate thriller isn't enough; to deem the author's prose splendid does not do it justice. Tidewater Blood is an exemplary achievement, one that may bring Mr. Hoffman the popular recognition he so patently deserves.
- Gail Cooke
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A riveting journey, October 1, 1998
William Hoffman taught me some years ago at Hampden-Sydney College, so I have followed his work with great interest. What is it that makes this book so compelling? It is Charley LeBlanc's resilience in a world that gives him little, if any, succor. Virtually every character he encounters distrusts him, most are arrayed against him, a few tolerate him. The sole advantage he has against his adversaries is an unspoken bond among the downtrodden. LeBlanc's unerring instincts keep him alive, if not quite thriving, as he works to solve a mystery that makes him the prime suspect in the killing of several members of his own family. As ever, Hoffman writes with style and intensity. He makes me proud to have studied under him.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Suspense? Maybe as a movie, but it's a picaresque first.., May 25, 1998
By A Customer
I have an obscure connection to Mr. Hoffman. He and I both attended Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, and although we never met, I have been aware of him and to some degree his work for more than 25 years.
Mr. Hoffman is an accomplished novelist and story teller, but I couldn't get past the fact that this seemed less a reader's than a film watcher's journey. And the idea that Tidewater Blood is a "suspense" (as the book jacket says) is less descriptive of its value than an older genre term: it is much more a picaresque journey of an independent son of the south through his conscious and unconscious past.
It's neither a page turner nor a put-down. What Tidewater Blood is is good, solid fiction from a writer who may be tiring of the work that comes with writing very well.
I choose not to hold it as the best example of Mr. Hoffman's talent.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
