Friendswood
Ratings1
Average rating4
15
Ratings1
Average rating4
"A big, moving novel of one tight-knit Texas community and the events that alter its residents' lives forever. Friendswood, Texas, is a small Gulf Coast town of church suppers, oil rigs on the horizon, hurricane weather, and high school football games. When tragedy rears its head with an industrial leak that kills and sickens residents, it pulls on the common thread that runs through the community, intensifying everything. From a confused sixteen-year-old girl beset by visions, to a high school football star tormented by his actions, to a mother galvanized by the death of her teen daughter, to a morally bankrupt father trying to survive his mistakes, Rene; Steinke explores what happens when families are trapped in the ambiguity of history's missteps-when the actions of a few change the lives and well-being of many. Driving the narrative powerfully forward is the suspenseful question of the fates of four Friendswood families, and Steinke's striking insight and empathy. Inspired in part by the town where she herself grew up, this layered, propulsive, psychologically complex story is poignant proof that extreme public events, as catastrophic as they might seem, must almost always pale in comparison to the intimate personal experiences and motivations of grief, love, lust, ambition, anxiety, and regret"--
"A big, moving novel of one tight-knit Texas community and the events that alter its residents' lives forever"--
Reviews with the most likes.
I lived Friendswood. From the minute I first saw this book on the Coming Soon section of blogs, as soon as I saw it dealt in part with the Superfund toxic waste site just outside the real town of Friendswood, Texas, I knew I had to read it. In the early eighties, I was a teacher at the school right in the middle of the subdivision built on top of the toxic waste site. Yep. And I was pregnant. So this was a have-to-read book for me. How did I like it? It was uneven, I thought. More like a weak attempt to throw together several loosely connected short stories. I liked it, but I didn't love it. It may have just been me, but I'd really like to ask the author a few questions. Why, for example, did she keep the names of some places and change the names of others? Did she really need to change the name of Beamer Road, where the toxic waste site was located? Odd, I thought. The Friendswood she depicts is a more redneck view than the one I experienced, and I'm curious about that. All in all, a solid story, and one you should definitely read if you have any connection to this area.
