Review: American Spirits

American Spirits by Russell Banks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Book rating: 3.75

Russell Banks is a good storyteller. These are three stories that are located around the same area, a small town in Northern New York state. They are dark, full of troubled people. Banks certainly knows how to quickly draw a character.

There are three stories: Nowhere man, Homeschooling and Kidnapped. My preference is for the middle story, Homeschooling.

Can't say I fully enjoyed these stories. All were bleak and did not come to happy conclusions. The first the main character is unhappy about how he sold off the land that had been in his family for generations and gets into a feud with the man who had purchased it.

Homeschooling concerns itself with a family that just moved into the town, well more about the neighbors, a lesbian married couple who adopted four siblings who are of a different race. The new neighbors are concerned about how the children are being treated.

The last Kidnapped are descendants of the town's founder, Sam Dent. The elderly couple are kidnapped by some Canadian drug lords and their grandson who they raised is their hope for being released. Their grandson Stevie perhaps is autistic, not sure, but he is different and never had any friends while growing up.

Somehow a MAGA hat made its way into each story as well. Not clear why except to point out the political position for some characters, although politics really didn't play into these stories. There is an undertone of poverty, but really everyone is getting by okay with some doing better than others.


Thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book. And to Penguin Random House Audio for an advance audio copy.

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