Review of Year of the Storm by John Mantooth
A.E. Jackson Review Score: 3 / 5 Ravens
How was this review scored?
Year of the Storm is the second John Mantooth novel I’ve had the pleasure reading. Debut novels can often be hit or miss. The publisher is taking a leap of faith with a new author - no matter how much editing and promotion was thrown into a project. Cemetery Dance Publications has a strong track record of picking winners, and they’ve found a consistent winner in John Mantooth!
Year of the Storm is a haunting and suspenseful novel. John Mantooth carries readers to a rural Alabama town where secrets are buried deep, reality is relative, and salvation requires a desperate act of faith.
At fourteen, Danny’s mother and sister disappeared during a violent storm. The police were baffled. Without any clues, most people thought they were dead. But Danny still held out hope that they'd return.
Months later Walter Pike, a disheveled Vietnam vet, shows up at Danny's front door. He claims to know their whereabouts. The story Walter tells is so incredible that Danny knows he shouldn't believe him. Others warn him about Pike's dark past, his shameful flight from town years ago, and the suspicious timing of his return.
But Pike is Danny's last hope, and Danny needs to believe.
Throughout the story, Danny has a hard time figuring out who to trust and who is a real threat. The reader will be wondering too. Is Walter Pike able to do the things he says? Or, is he a severely damaged individual who committed terrible crimes that are finally catching up with him? From moment to moment the reader and main character will have to rely on faith to proceed against what logical evidence tells them.
The storytelling device chosen was interesting and well done. The main character, Danny, is explaining the whole story to his shrink Dwight. Readers may be left feeling storm tossed as the perspective shifts to Walter Pike’s point of view. There aren’t many indications and readers are immediately in a different time and a different character.
The psychologist wants to reduce everything to a metaphor. This leaves Danny and the reader unsure about what is (or was) real - and what is a constructed story to help Danny cope with the emotional fallout of losing his mother and sister.
Mantooth manages to cling the reader tight to Danny and Pike’s side throughout the exhilarating, fast-paced, well-plotted storm. The cathartic ending is well-earned by Danny, and the reader, after facing so many trials.
John Mantooth is the award-winning author of two novels and a short story collection. His first novel, The Year of the Storm, was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award. He has also published three crime novels under the pseudonym Hank Early. Heaven’s Crooked Finger (written as Hank Early) was a Next Generation Indie Book award winner and 2017 Foreword Indies Award Finalist. He lives in Alabama with his wife and two children.