{"id":3223,"date":"2015-07-09T23:11:26","date_gmt":"2015-07-10T03:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/?p=3223"},"modified":"2015-07-09T23:11:26","modified_gmt":"2015-07-10T03:11:26","slug":"autumn-of-the-loons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/autumn-of-the-loons\/","title":{"rendered":"AUTUMN OF THE LOONS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jackie Clay, Backwoods Home\u2019s <\/em>most popular author, has followed up her first novel with a sequel that her fans hope will be the first of many, \u201cAutumn of the Loons.\u201d\u00a0 I enjoyed it as much as I did her first, \u201cSummer of the Eagles.\u201d\u00a0 You can order both here: https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/<\/a> .<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cAutumn of the Loons\u201d picks up a few years after the first novel, on a ranch in the Old Western frontier where the good folks who survived the first story (the bad folks didn\u2019t) are building happy new lives.\u00a0 And then\u2026 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Look, I don\u2019t do spoilers. Let me just say that as in the first book, there are life lessons that will resonate with anyone who lives or at least understands self-reliance and the backwoods home lifestyle.\u00a0 Things from the past that we all want to leave behind come back to haunt us, and have to be dealt with.\u00a0 Only adversity shows you who\u2019s really your friend.\u00a0 Good deeds pay themselves forward in unexpected ways.\u00a0 Racial hatred seems never to end, but at least can be ameliorated between people of honor.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Jackie seems to have followed the long-standing advice to writers, \u201cwrite what you know.\u201d\u00a0 She does, and her evocative writing style puts you there with her characters.\u00a0 She makes you feel the heat and the terror of the onrushing wildfire, the icy rain and snow of encroaching winter where there\u2019s no shelter you can\u2019t fabricate yourself out of nature.\u00a0 Perhaps just for us geezers, there\u2019s a moment where a seasoned veteran of life\u2019s anguish uses his well-worn Colt Frontier .44-40 to put a homicidal young gunman with a state of the art double action Colt Lightning in his place, which happens to be six feet under.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The characters are well-drawn. Yes, there\u2019s one stone evil psychopath who seems like a cartoon villain from a Charles Bronson movie, but there are<\/em> people like that.\u00a0 She gives us another, more complex villain who\u2019s a sociopath with enough humanity to redeem himself and save an innocent life before he meets his maker.\u00a0 And finally, as in her first novel, Jackie gives us Justice\u2026DIY justice, it\u2019s true, but the novel is set in a time and place where that\u2019s pretty much the only kind available.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Like I said, I won\u2019t spoil it for you. I\u2019ll only say, read the book, and be standing by for the third in the series, \u201cWinter of the Wolves.\u201d\u00a0 As they say in my world, \u201cFurther, the affiant sayeth not.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jackie Clay, Backwoods Home\u2019s most popular author, has followed up her first novel with a sequel that her fans hope will be the first of many, \u201cAutumn of the Loons.\u201d\u00a0 I enjoyed it as much as I did her first, \u201cSummer of the Eagles.\u201d\u00a0 You can order both here: https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/ . \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cAutumn of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3223","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reviews"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}