Title: The civil wars of Jonah Moran
Description: After her award-winning novel, THE STARLITE DRIVE-IN, Marjorie Reynolds returns with a mystery and a drama that unravels the painful history of the influential Moran family in a remote logging town on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. In trying to clear her mentally disabled brother of arson, Jessica Moran must deal with her autocratic mother Lila and her brother Jonah's obsessive preoccupation with the Civil War. Jonah, who re-enacts battles with his miniature soldiers, believes he could have won for the Confederacy if only he had been in charge. As evidence of his guilt mounts, Jessica must co-operate with Callum Luke, the Native American arson investigator who was once her lover, and deal with the town's commitment to its own contradictory brand of justice, bigotry, paranoia and forgiveness. In describing this rugged, isolated area of the Pacific Northwest -- the submerged trees in a treacherous lake, the lichen-draped woods sweet with the smell of tree sap and resins, the almost magical Quinault Indian Reservation -- Reynolds captures with soaring prose the mystical and spiritual connection between the land and the people who live there. In reviewing THE CIVIL WARS OF JONAH MORAN, Publishers Weekly says, "Reynolds once again proves herself a sure-handed storyteller."
Subjects: Arson investigation, Autism, Divorced women, Fiction, Patients, Quinault Indians, Poetry (poetic works by one author), Fiction, general, Washington (state), fiction, Indians of north america, fiction, City and town life, Brothers and sisters, Autistic people
Places: Olympic Peninsula (Wash.)