Customer Reviews

The Yellow Ribbon Snake

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3 star:		(1)
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This small volume speaks of tortured childhood and the tragedy of homelessness. It also rings with truth through many-sided characters. Worth taking a second read, too. The language is perfect for the characters, and they stay with you after you're done.

I was browsing the library for something different to read and the front cover of this book caught my eye. I'm glad it did. This book is weird,funny, real, sexual, and just down right great.Does she have anything else in print?

Jacko Lee is a homeless vet, simple-minded, sexually abused by his mother, shellshocked by the Vietnam War, Jacko has returned to the desert cross-roads community where he grew up, lives in a makeshift box, and tries to understand his past. Jacko has surrounded himself with an odd assortment of friends including Sonny Ray (a drifter), Darla (a hooker), Pitts (a corpse); and Norton (a spider). His friends come and go, but Jacko remains, determined to solve the murder mystery of his past and find the means to his own redemption. Jacko's principle source of support is his older half-sister, Marie. She'll will fight anyone in defense of her brother, even to the pint of neglecting her own need for love and tenderness. The Yellow Ribbon Snake is author J.R. Dailey's highly recommended debut novel of quirky characters, danger, death, sex, murder, abuse, insanity, love, compassion, humor, wisdom, and the enduring human spirit.

This is a woman's novel, and for me that means it has little logic, reason or meaning and is devoid of a typical problem - action - solution type of storyline.

On that basis, it may be an excellent novel. It has an interesting subject, authentic settings (I'm familiar with the area on a first-hand basis), and addresses a relevant topic. The author is well-informed, astute, sensitive and quite capable of projecting these traits onto paper.

Trouble is, I'm not female. Women are process oriented, they want to see how something is done and understand the personalities involved. Men are results oriented; Rambo is a good example, a man with zero personality and tremendous results. Men like stories that say, "I came, I saw, I conquered." Women's stories express the idea, "I saw someone with a need, I figured out how to help, and together we accomplished something worthwhile."

It's what I call a "slice of life" story; the central character is a big-hearted, homeless Vietnam vet who has to fend off the ever-helping hands of his sister and other do-gooders. His principle concern is his grandmother, but no one else seems to care or understand. Other than that he is content with his life, and has no desire to adopt his sister's plateful of troubles that include a boyfriend who's a cop and a former boyfriend who's a drug dealer. The author looks at her two central characters, plus those who impinge upon their self-satisfied "take life as it comes" lifestyle, and in effect concludes "people can do pretty well if you leave them alone."

If a man had written this book, the central characters would have gone from desert rats to the executive suite. Look at Larry McMurtry, for example, from `The Last Picture Show" to "Dwayne." his latest novel. McMurtry's characters become raging success stories, and are still psychological basket cases filled with bundles of raging anxieties; Dailey's characters stay right where they are, but they put to rest any lingering inner demons that have troubled their souls.

In one, success means going from a Ford Escort to a Lincoln; in this book, problems are solved and you get the impression by the end "these people are going to live happily ever after."

In other words, it's a good book to read. Women will probably criticize this review "because there were problems left unsolved, so how can it be a happy ending?" Men will criticize it "because, you dummy, he didn't even get a new cardboard box to live in . . . let alone move to a penthouse." Neither of those endings appears to have been Dailey's goal, she simply wanted to portray a "slice of life" about people who are usually invisible to most of us."

In doing so, she wrote an interesting book. Read it, not for what you may learn about the homeless in Tucson, but for what you'll discover about yourself.