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Loading... Rust & Stardust: A Novel (original 2018; edition 2018)by T. Greenwood (Author)
Work InformationRust & Stardust by T. Greenwood (2018)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. I don't know. I thought about not rating this because I didn't feel entirely comfortable rating it since the book made me so uncomfortable. But maybe I've been reading too much literary fiction recently (or at least segments thereof) but I found myself wondering what the point of this was? Why? What's the greater meaning? Does this shed any light, provide any insights, into anyone? It definitely was sad, and definitely made me uncomfortable, but often the narration jumping felt choppy and gimmicky, ways to show more perspective without making the readers work for it. I wanted more of Sue, even though Al was my favourite character--why was it the man? I wanted more history--the only way we knew this was the late 1940s was a rotary phone and two characters coming back from war. Does that not have a bigger impact, especially on Russell? I don't know. This is a fictionalized (and largely imagined) account of the 1948 kidnapping of Sally Horner, reporting on which is thought to be part of what inspired Vladimir Nabokov to write his most famous novel. Greenwood takes the known facts of Horner's story to imagine what her months being held captive were like and to tell the story from the points of view of Sally and the members of her family, as well as a few others who knew Sally during her time with Frank LaSalle. This was a sensational case, but Greenwood takes care to focus on the emotional impact for all those affected and to explain why Sally believes LaSalle's lies. This is pretty straight-forward historical fiction and Greenwood isn't trying to do anything ground-breaking except to tell a story well and in this she largely succeeds, with a story that certainly held my interest throughout. While not a "true crime" this compelling work of historical fiction based on real people and events broke my heart in a million pieces. In 1948 when 11 year old Sally Horner was abducted and held captive for 21 horrific months, news did not travel so quickly then as it does today. There were no amber alerts to cell phones, no world wide web on which to upload pictures of the missing and their captors, no national sex crime registry in which to keep track of the location of known child molesters. More https://wellwortharead.blogspot.com/2018/05/rust-stardust-by-t-greenwood.html no reviews | add a review
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Camden, NJ, 1948. When 11 year-old Sally Horner steals a notebook from the local Woolworth's, she has no way of knowing that 52 year-old Frank LaSalle, fresh out of prison, is watching her, preparing to make his move. Accosting her outside the store, Frank convinces Sally that he's an FBI agent who can have her arrested in a minute, unless she does as he says. This chilling novel traces the next two harrowing years as Frank mentally and physically assaults Sally while the two of them travel westward from Camden to San Jose, forever altering not only her life, but the lives of her family, friends, and those she meets along the way. Based on the experiences of real-life kidnapping victim Sally Horner and her captor, whose story shocked the nation and inspired Vladimir Nabokov to write his controversial and iconic Lolita, this heart-pounding story by award-winning author T. Greenwood at last gives a voice to Sally herself. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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