Why a Booktrail?
2000s: You’ve not been to any small town like Tall Oaks…
Tall Oaks
What you need to know before your trail
Tall Oaks is an idyllic small town, until the disappearance of a young child throws the tight-knit community into crisis. Jess Monroe, the boy’s distraught mother, is simultaneously leading the search and battling her own grief and self-destructive behaviour. Her neighbours watch on, their sympathy masking a string of dark secrets. This is a small town where nothing is as it seems, and everyone has something to hide. And as the investigation draws towards a climax, prepare for a devastating final twist…
Travel Guide
The perils and pitfalls of living in small town America
Tall Oaks (c) The BookTrail
Tall Oaks is of course fictional but is an amalgamation of all things about small town America. A kidnapping in a small community must ricochet events like nothing else as the person who did it could well be one of the locals you see everyday. Strangers in towns like this are noticed and observed or so the locals say. But whilst the town of Tall Oaks might not have much to recommend it, or put it on the map so to speak, a missing child will change that:
“Things like this didn’t happen in Tall Oaks. They had the usual stuff – break-ins, vandalism, the occasional fight. Most people in the town were well-heeled and silver-spooned with a name to protect”
The local news is said to light up like a firework where there’s a stabbing . “The abduction of a small child had hit the town like an avalanche”
Working
Newcomers come from far and wide. Small towns want to attract dentists, doctors etc so they usually come from other towns …or even countries.
“Abe looked at Manny, his eyes wide
Dentist.
Iraq
Manny closed his eyes and nodded solemnly”
Driving
“As he stepped out of the Ford Escape, he felt the sweat plastering his father’s starched white cotton shirt to his back.
He’s begged (his mother) to buy an old Cadillac , or a Lincoln.”
Landscape
This is the town where the tumbleweed blows across the road, the cadillacs drive up and down main street, people look in the windows of the cafes, buildings in the street but are they looking at their reflection or what sits behind them…?
Booktrailer Review
Susan@thebooktrailer
B***dy funny. Now I don’t usually use expletives in reviews but then this is no ordinary novel and so no oridinary review. I heard all the build up, met the author, went to the launch and even ate a bit of the Tall Oaks cake that was there. Not too much mind – I remembered the Iraqi dentist in the book. The characters stuck in my mind so much that I must admit I half expected them to be at the launch – they’re so real and this is their story after all. – They weren’t – well I don’t think so 😉
The character of Manny is just the funniest man – gangster ever. Well a man who wants to be a gangster but his mum thinks its too hot for him to wear the menacing dark clothes. Even in the middle of nowhere there’s a mother telling things like it is.
It’s a belter of a book – a very funny and witty read – It makes you feel every emotion under the (Californian) sun – with the detail of small town America, the quicks and foibles plain to see. Now the reader is the outsider and has to sort the wheat from the chaff as it were to find out the secrets within. But there’s a lot growing in the deep soil of this part of California – even in a town starched with the truth. The heat faded cover is just perfect – for Tall Oaks will frazzle your brain with the witty nature of it all, the dark secrets, the ups and downs and that cheeky reveal.
Oh and I won’t be eating in Pizza Hut anytime soon 😉 Or then again..
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information: Tall Oaks
Author/Guide: Chris Whittaker Destination: Tall Oaks (fictional) California Departure Time: 2000s
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