BLOOD AND REMEMBRANCE
by
CHRIS MANNO
Genre: Contemporary Literary Fiction
Publisher: Dark Horse Books
Publication Date: March 3, 2018
Number of Pages: 321 pages
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Blood and Remembrance is the prequel to the award-winning Texas novel, East Jesus. This new, stand-alone story rampages from the west Texas plains to Huntsville’s Death Row and back. Cowboys, ranchers, driven oilmen, desperate convicts and headstrong women grapple with truths of the heart, of life, and the coming of age in a dramatic struggle you’ll live yourself and never forget.
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“I wish I could have it all.”
Blood and Remembrance by Chris Manno is a gritty snapshot of hard choices, hard lives, and hard truths. All the main characters seem to be in some sort of prison, most figuratively and one literally. Verlene’s prison is constructed based on the inability to choose between the four men in her life, so she sleeps with them all and drowns the messy truth in a sea of tequila. Randy Mac’s prison is constructed based on the inability to resist temptation as well as find his backbone or his voice. Ray’s prison is the literal one. Doesn’t get any more real than Huntsville.
The overall storytelling is far from conventional, with its uniquely developed structure, plot, and characters. The story flows back and forth between the characters as they struggle within their prisons, searching for that elusive freedom to find a life worth living. You can read for yourself where these people end up in this prequel to East Jesus, but I will say that their lives are filled with hate, lust, uncertainty, drugs, booze, betrayal, blood, and violence. Their lives are real.
The juxtaposition of the literal and figurative prisons is both stark and frightening. Ray’s life at Huntsville Prison is ugly, and the author holds nothing back in portraying the mean and disgusting truth of doing whatever it takes to survive. Verlene and Randy Mac are free to do what they want and go where they want, but their lives are no less disgusting and heartbreaking as they search for the freedom that has always been within their grasp, but they are too blind or too scared to see it.
Manno’s writing style matches the story: rough, abrasive, realistic, and fluid. All grammatical issues aside, the overall story is worth exploring because it purposely makes you uncomfortable and causes you to marvel at the characters’ foolish choices and their stubborn determination to rationalize those choices. The ending offers a ray of hope for some and a bleak future for others. And that’s how life usually plays out. That’s real.
Enter the giveaway below for a chance to win a signed copy of Blood and Remembrance by Chris Manno.
Chris Manno of Fort Worth, Texas, earned a doctorate in English from Texas Christian University and teaches writing at Texas Wesleyan University.
East Jesus, his first novel, was named “finalist” (second place) for Best Fiction of 2017 by the North Texas Book Festival. The novel takes a close-up, visceral look at West Texas life in 1969 and the good folks who lived it, grappling with notions of family, patriotism and violence, both domestic and in a far-off, unpopular war.
Blood and Remembrance is the prequel to East Jesus, tracing the roots of the main characters in both books, examining the harsh but classically All-American story of life in the Texas panhandle.
Manno is also the author of a third novel, Voodoo Rush, winner for Best Fiction of 2018 by the North Texas Book Festival, and a collection of short stories titled Short Fiction for the Impatient Reader. Both books are available from White Bird Publications of Austin Texas.
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MINI-INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR CHRIS MANNO
Q: Why a prequel?
A: Many readers and even a few critics suggested a sequel to East Jesus, but to me, the story felt like it was well-ended, cataclysmically final at that. I talked it over with the publisher and we both agreed: if I felt the story was over, the matter was settled.
But a prequel appealed to me, began talking to me as good stories do to receptive writers: who were these people, what forces shaped them, how did they grow to be the dynamic characters in East Jesus? And how did the next generation come about?
The story that unfolded burned hot and fast and became Blood and Remembrance.
Q: Do readers need to have read East Jesus to understand Blood and Remembrance?
A: Not at all—Remembrance is a stand-alone story. However, those who’ve read East Jesus will have “aha moments” throughout.
Q: What was your goal in writing this story?
A: Exactly what I teach as a writing professor. That is, habitable prose, stories people live themselves rather than just read. Once you live the experience, the story—and the meaning— belong to the reader.
Q: Explain the multiple viewpoints in Remembrance.
A: It’s simple; in fact, it’s the way we experience the world: variable, fast-moving and at the pace of modern life — a virtual kaleidoscope of action and adventure we sort into meaning. Readers live the story through different characters and, in the same way our post-modern world unfolds, put the pieces together to create meaning. I trust the readerS to do that; I give them credit for that ability to make their own meaning of the bricolage they live on these pages.
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What a great analogy of the prisons that even the free create for themselves. Thanks for a great review.
Thanks! As I read, I kept seeing how easy it is to slip into a prison of your own making and blame everyone but yourself. That is definitely my main takeaway from the book.