WOW- THis Troy & Genie Nilsson couple makes great kids music! I love it too! I'm going to get some more of it.

>From the Black Hills Judy Troy Random House 1999 ISBN 0375502300 P.B. Fiction

It is the summer after high school graduation and Mike Newlin is an average 18 year old, except his father has killed his secretary whom he was having an affair, now he has left to parts unknown. This was a very depressing book to read, I found it hard to stick with. The story line flowed well enough so well that you felt every hurt and pain that Mike goes through at his young age. It is very hard for Mike to go on after his father is gone, he must look out for his mother who thinks that her life is nothing without her husband,his girlfriend who is clinging all the time, and the fact that he is in love with his bosses wife. As you read this book keep the kleenex box handy because you will need them. Judy Troy is the author of two New York Times Notable books and a Whiting Award Winner.

Mike Newlin is a pretty mature kid who faces issues that no one should have to. His father kills the office receptionist, with whom he had been having an affair, and then goes on the lam. This book covers that magic time in a kid's life between high school graduation and the beginning of college - when you are full of anticipation and between two lives. Instead of just spending time with his girlfriend, lusting after his employer's wife and getting ready to go to SDSU, he has to deal with the additional issues of his reaction to his father's actions, his mother's way of coping with this event and a nosy detective. It's no surprise that college doesn't go as it should for Mike, although when the book ends you hope that he will be able to have a new beginning. I particularly liked the role of the Black Hills and the Badlands in this book. The desolate beauty of the area fit the despairing theme of this book very well.

Like a skillful heart surgeon, Judy Troy makes no wasteful motions. Her prose is elegant, spare and clean, slightly like Hemingway's. Her work resembles even more closely the novels of another contemporary writer: Richard Ford. I loved his "Independence Day", and "From the Black Hills" echoed the subject matter and style of that book. Both deal with numb, intelligent teenage boys who struggle with their fragile male egos and fantasies at the same time that they struggle to do the right thing. Both have difficult, painful relationships with their fathers.

However, "From the Black Hills" is far from a carbon copy. From the beginning of this novel, one gets the impression of falling, depression and disintegration. This sense comes from being parked closely, as readers, inside Mike's head. As the book develops steam, it becomes clear that Mike's depression and sense of helplessness spring from the feeling that he must follow in his disturbed father's footsteps. The fear that many of us have, that we will become our parents, in Mike becomes almost complete psychological and moral paralysis. Ms. Troy does an excellent job of presenting the inner workings of a tormented boy -- I had to check the jacket cover to find out that she was a woman and not just writing from experience. I loved this book 95%, and couldn't stop talking about it to my friends when I finished it. I immediately passed it on. My one complaint is the ending. Although it is not entirely implausible, it's a little too quick and pat. Otherwise, it was a wonderful book.

Those who encounter "West of Venus" will immediately recognize either people they know or themselves, expanded and enlarged by their humor, sadness, or loneliness. Without doubt destined for women's reading groups' book lists and ultimately the silver screen (though a weekly series would be heavenly), this novel is one which will have you calling your best friend in the middle of the night comparing which paragraphy (or sentence) most delighted you. I would love to meet the author and personally thank her for this liberating, joyous book.

A New York Times "notable book of the year," Judy Troy's West of Venus brings the concision of her New Yorker stories to a larger canvas: the heart and heartland of America. This smart novel is filled with laughter and tears. Although West of Venus begins with a suicide and ends with a funeral, it is joy to read throughout: one of those rare fictions that show the ups and downs of life simultaneously and poignantly. I loved this book.

Having come from La Crosse, Kansas myself, I read West of Venus with a great deal of pleasure. Although Venus is more than twice the size of La Crosse, Troy has captured just what it is like to live in the middle of nowhere and to have daily contact with people who never read books. Although Tom Drury's The Age of Vandalism was better to my way of thinking, I still enjoyed this book very much.