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Tanya Parker Mills

Autor von The Reckoning

2 Werke 14 Mitglieder 3 Rezensionen

Werke von Tanya Parker Mills

The Reckoning (2008) 7 Exemplare
A Night on Moon Hill (2012) 7 Exemplare

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I won this book through the fantastic GoodReads first reads programme.

This wasn't exactly your typical mystery, nor was it your typical thriller, or typical book really. Picking it up I initially expected a murder mystery, but then it switched into something far more complicated and intricate. I believe that [a:Tanya Parker Mills|2024345|Tanya Parker Mills|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1246385390p2/2024345.jpg] did a superb job of working through the bewildering feeling one gets surrounded by circumstances that they can't comprehend. She did a similarly marvelous job of sinking into the story bit by bit, allowing it to become routine, to become accustomed... then snatching it all away.

This book was truly a fascinating ride, and one I enjoyed taking. If you ever wish to glimpse the strange world of a high functioning person with Aspergers, well, this is as close as you'll get without watching Sherlock.
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Lepophagus | 1 weitere Rezension | Jun 14, 2018 |
A Night on Moon Hill
by Tanya Parker Mills
Published by Walnut Springs Press
This book was given to me by the author, with a request that I write an honest and unbiased review.

Dr. Daphne Lessing is a college writing teacher with undiagnosed Asperger's Syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder. When she was fifteen, she gave birth to a baby she gave up for adoption because her father was insisting on prosecuting her eighteen-year-old boyfriend for statutory rape unless she gave up the child. Refusing to disclose the father's name, she agrees to adoption. Now she has in one of her graduate seminars Joshua, a brilliant young man--whom she goes home to find dead in her swimming pool. Now things move fast.Joshua has left behind, apparently as a suicide note, a poem connecting the waters of a mother's womb with other waters. He has also left a legacy to Daphne--the knowledge that he is her son; a request that she take custody of his ward Eric, his ten-year-old half-brother, fathered by the father of her son; two million dollars she neither wants nor needs; and all his journals from age eight to the day of his death.

Daphne has never been around young children, and like all Asperger's patients, she is very poor in interpersonal relationships. She emphatically does not want custody of Eric, who has Asperger's and is very difficult. She does not want to cope with the police, the court system, Detective Patrick Clayton (who has a peculiarly strong interest in both her and Eric), Eric's present foster mother, the woman from Family and Children's Services, and everybody else whom fate has thrust upon her, including the book tour her agent and publisher seem to be compelling her to take.

Well . . . not quite fate. Joshua, faced with dying of ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) after watching his birth father die of it, has chosen to commit suicide in his birth mother's swimming pool so that she WILL be forced into taking custody of Eric.

Her department chair puts her on sabbatical starting immediately, in the middle of the semester and running through the end of the summer, to get her emotions under control. She winds up taking Eric for the weekend . . the summer . . . discovering by researching Eric's problems that she has the same problems to a lesser degree . . .applying for permanent custody of him . . . when his still-living birth mother, now married to a particularly disagreeable businessman, suddenly decides she wants to reclaim him. By now Daphne is certain that Eric's mother and stepfather will not be able to cope with Eric's quirks, which include a strong interest in angels and fishing and an extreme reluctance to eat anything but bologna sandwiches made according to Joshua's recipe. Joshua's father, Steve, also ate nothing but bologna sandwiches, even back when he and Daphne between them conceived Joshua in their one sex encounter.

Now devastated by the loss of the fascinating child she originally didn't want, Daphne has to force herself to work cooperatively with other people to get Eric back. But Eric's stepfather, who has no interest other than negative treatment in Eric, has very great interest in Eric's two-million-dollar trust fund.

By the time the denouement is reached, everybody in the book has changed in some way.

I was particularly drawn into this novel for personal reasons: I am a former college writing teacher and I have Asperger's, which was not diagnosed until I was in my fifties. Of course I recognized Daphne's symptoms immediately, within the first few pages of the book, and as Asperger's continued to loom larger and larger in the story, I was compelled to sit up until five AM to finish reading. But I am convinced that any person of compassion will be as drawn into the story as I was. It is a literary triumph which deserves awards it probably will not get; it is also an unusual story of love and loss. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in issues of childhood disabilities that carry over into adulthood, and in overbearing parents and stepparents. I also recommend it for anyone who loves a child and/or literature.

This is one of the most moving books I have ever read.

Anne Wingate
Author of Scene of the Crime and other works of fiction and nonfiction
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Anne.Wingate | 1 weitere Rezension | Nov 20, 2012 |
For my complete review, please visit Perpetual Chaos of a Wandering Mind.

The Reckoning Plot: beginning in the summer of 2002, our heroine, Theresa, a freelance journalist after a story, illegally crosses out of Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and is spotted by the Islamist fundamentalist group, the Ansari, which leads to her apprehension by the Iraqi army. With her are arrested her cameraman, Peter (who is in love with her), and her three Kurdish guides (a father and two sons).

Just a few months before the US invasion, Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush are rattling sabers at one another. Terror reigns in Iraq. Theresa, Peter, Jalal, Massoud, and Barham endure isolation, starvation, and torture in the hands of the Iraqi secret police. When Theresa's history of living in Iraq as a child comes to light, her situation becomes nearly hopeless.

Tanya Parker Mills' finely honed craft draws in the reader with painful, sometimes shocking realism. Her plot so tight it's hermetically sealed, her characters rich and compelling, her pacing impeccable, she accomplishes what only the best writers manage: she disappears as she envelopes the reader in the story.

Tanya Parker Mills illustrates the country in vivid detail with the sights, sounds and smells of the region. The heat of the desert radiates from the page. Perhaps most importantly, Ms. Mills' own time spent in the Middle East has given her compassion and empathy for its people which she in turns instills in her readers.

She creates an unlikely hero in the arresting officer, Tariq al-Alwali, US educated but caught up in events beyond his control, doing what he must to keep his family alive. Like himself, his mother and grandfather, even his house help all live in fear knowing that any moment they could be arrested, arbitrarily executed, and never heard from again, all without cause or hope of redress. Just as the rest of the Iraqi population, they are at the mercy of their government and the consciences (or lack thereof) of the men in power.

The reader should be cautioned that Tanya Parker Mills writes with stark realism and doesn't pull any punches. Her characters are tortured and brutalized in the manner known to be practiced in Iraq at the time, including rape and dismemberment. People suffer and die. She often taxes the sensibilities of the reader with the intensity of her prose.

The Reckoning is a novel to read again and again to truly appreciate all its subtle nuances.

FTC disclaimer: An electronic copy of this book was provided by the author or their agent with the understanding I would publish a fair and honest review. I receive no other compensation for this content.
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Penny.Freeman | Jul 19, 2012 |

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Werke
2
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14
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#739,559
Bewertung
4.8
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3
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2