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February 24, 2014
“How could he put into words what it was like to hold someone who was bleeding to death?” wonders a character in Crook’s (The Raven’s Bride) intensely imagined novel. Crook focuses on the impact of one of the first mass murders in U.S. history—Charles Whitman’s tower shootings at the University of Texas. Shelly is a student at UT in 1966. One fateful, yet utterly ordinary day, she is crossing the campus plaza when a bullet from Whitman’s rifle hits her, knocking her to the sizzling Texas concrete, where it seems certain that she’ll bleed to death. But two other students, cousins named Jack and Wyatt, take it upon themselves to rescue her and other students from the wide-open plaza. From then on, Shelly and Wyatt’s lives will intersect in ways they don’t anticipate. The story unfurls simply and smoothly, with a quiet insistence much like the path the characters will take. Crook renders Shelly’s interior life delicately and fully, and artfully conveys her many moments of panic and anguish.

Starred review from May 1, 2014
An almost-forgotten massacre at the University of Texas propels an intergenerational tale marked by vivid moments of connection and disconnection, fear and courage. Framing a story in the context of calamity-in this instance, mass murder-invites both sensationalism and sentimentality; there have been few memorable successes, Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Wally Lamb's The Hour I First Believed among them. Add Crook's latest to the plus side of the list. Its opening finds Shelly, a 4.0 student, outside on that fateful day in August 1966 when a former Marine named Charles Whitman opened fire from atop the university's tower, killing 17 people and wounding many more. Shattered by a bullet-and Crook's account of that mayhem is both gruesome and perfectly pitched, emotionally speaking-Shelly is rescued by two cousins who are forevermore bound up in her life and she in theirs. One, Wyatt, is on the cusp of the rising new Austin of hippies and Willie Nelson; the other, Jack, is apparently more conventional. Wyatt is rebel enough to admit to not much liking chicken-fried steak; but then, neither does Shelly, and that's not the only way their tastes will intersect, either. Wisely, Crook allows her characters to change in believable ways over the course of four decades, but the novel-with its moments of love, loss and conflict-is always pointing back to that terrible past. Crook (The Night Journal, 2006, etc.) gets the period details just right, not least the bittersweet song of the title, which was wafting from radios as Whitman was firing. And she delivers beautifully turned lines, as when, at the end of their long, bumpy ride, Shelly says to Wyatt in parting, "[d]on't say anything I won't be able to forget." Shelly reflects that "[s]he had never come anywhere near perfection, but had come close to a rightness with herself, through her losses." So it is with this novel, which, though not quite perfect, is just right: confident and lyrical as it smartly engages terror and its aftermath.

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May 1, 2014

On August 1, 1966, Charles Whitman opened fire on the University of Texas at Austin campus, killing 16 people and injuring 32 before being killed by the police. This fictionalized account by Texas native Crook (The Raven's Bride) begins on this terrible day with Shelly, a student shot and bleeding on the campus plaza. Cousins Wyatt and Jack rush to help the victims and hence entangle their futures forever with Shelly's. We follow the three and their extended families for the next four decades, as secrets unravel and the tragedy they faced still resonates. Love, loss, redemption, forgiveness--all are expertly drawn in a narrative that is so very authentic and generous. Crook skillfully weaves together several compelling stories through her close attention to the Texas setting. VERDICT The sensitively explored themes of adoption and coping with violence should create interest in this rich and satisfying tale, which will also appeal to fans of fiction focusing on recent history or the Texas Hill Country.--Jennifer B. Stidham, Houston Community Coll. Northeast

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2014
This intense novel opens with a horrific scene depicting one of the first mass shootings in U.S. history, when Charles Whitman killed 17 students at the University of Texas at Austin in 1966. Shelly, a freshman, is grievously wounded by the sniper's bullet and convinced she will bleed out on the searing concrete plaza, where she lies surrounded by the dead. But two cousins, Jack and Wyatt, come to her rescue. That singular, surreal encounter binds them together over decades as Shelly and the married Wyatt engage in a profound and passionate love affair, which produces a child. Jack and his wife adopt the child and generously welcome Shelly into their lives, while Wyatt moves to Provincetown, where his art career takes off. Even as Shelly finds love again with a smart and generous man, she is still tethered to her firstborn child and haunted by her secret love affair. Although the plot of Crook's fourth novel (after The Night Journal, 2007) sometimes loses its way after its potent opening, overall this is a vivid portrayal of resolve in the face of great tragedy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)