Amazon.com
Filled with tortured souls ravaged by an alcoholic Wisconsin farmer, The Turtle Warrior, Mary Relindes Ellis's debut novel, is a depressing book. Having lied about his own military experience in WW II, John Lucas goads his eldest son, Jim, into "becoming a man" by fighting in Vietnam, wherein Jim goes missing and is presumed dead. The novel focuses almost exclusively on the dysfunctional Lucases, save for the neighboring couple that acts as surrogates to the children. The townspeople note: "John Lucas walked their streets like a film character, haunting them when they saw him in the bar, working at the mill, or driving on the road. He was a wrong turn personified. A wrong turn they might have taken, might still take."
Since Ellis is at her strongest with the first-person narratives of the rest of the nuclear family, and often writes eloquent prose, it is disappointing to have John's point of view glossed over with exposition, since he ultimately destroyed his own family. Everyone here has demons, and the imposed weightiness of the subject matter can be cumbersome at times (if anyone cries or laughs, it seems always to be done to the point of exhaustion). Debilitating addiction and crippling anguish make The Turtle Warrior a difficult journey, but one worth taking. --Michael Ferch
From Publishers Weekly
This sensitive, melancholic first novel by Midwestern short story writer Ellis probes the troubled heart of a Wisconsin farm family. John Lucas is a subsistence farmer and an abusive alcoholic feared by his wife and his children, James and Bill. In 1967, 18-year-old Jimmy, who slicks his hair into a pompadour and plays pranks on gentle eight-year-old Bill, enlists in the Marines, intending, in part, to prove something to the brutal father who'd lied about his own military service. But when Jimmy goes missing in action, he abandons to their fate those he had always protected-his mother, Claire, and vulnerable Bill, who must bear the savage brunt of John's self-loathing and failure as a farmer. Claire is an educated woman whose marriage breaks her spirit; though Bill spends time with a kind, childless couple, Ernie and Rosemary Morriseau, he is damaged physically and emotionally. From alternating points of view, Ellis reveals the details of decades of family life (from 1967 to 2000) in the Lucas and Morriseau households-including the meeting, courtship and marriage of each couple after World War II. The upshot is that Jimmy's affecting saga gets lost amid all the history, though Jimmy does return from the dead to tell his war story ("I have feelings too, which is weird"). Bill's tale is also dark; though he believes that the turtle shell shield he makes will protect him, he grows into a man haunted by his past. Though she lays on the pathos a bit too thick, Ellis's debut is affecting and sometimes gorgeously poetic. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–A well-written, if somewhat dark, novel. It's 1967 on a northern Wisconsin farm, and 8-year-old Billy Lucas watches as his 17-year-old brother, Jimmy, shoots a snapping turtle in the jaw. The ultrasensitive child tries to save the wounded animal, an action that becomes a metaphor throughout the book. The childless couple next door, Ernie and Rosemary Morriseau, treat the neglected boys as their own. Ernie is half Native American and deemed inferior by Mr. Lucas and other farmers in the area. When Jimmy enlists and is sent to Vietnam, Ernie, a World War II veteran, feels guilty for not having stopped him. Once Jimmy is listed as MIA, his spirit returns to the farm where he is spotted by several of the characters. Billy withdraws into a silent, morose teenager; his father drinks behind the barn, hiding bottles of liquor under the soil. His mother walks the farm in her dirty housecoat and curlers talking to herself. And the Morriseaus stop communicating with them. When John Lucas dies, the adult Billy takes on his father's abusive and alcoholic persona, and Ernie tries to save him as he was unable to save his brother. This lyrically written novel is filled with descriptions of farming and has themes of alcoholism, parental abuse, prejudice against Native Americans, and coming-of-age problems.–Pat Bender, The Shipley School, Bryn Mawr, PA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
The first-time traveler through the remote and rugged part of Wisconsin that natives call "up north" is likely to ask, "Who lives here, anyway?" The small towns are few and far between. The land is so heavily wooded and the soil so clotted with stones that farming seems impossible. The rivers are wild and the lakes glacially cold or frozen. Along Lake Superior, snows are often measured in feet rather than inches. The local economy largely depends upon luring tourists to a country as forbidding as it is enticing.In her finely observed first novel, The Turtle Warrior, Mary Relindes Ellis not only tells us who lives there but how and why. And her answers, like the region, are simultaneously exhilarating and harrowing.The novel focuses on two families living on adjacent farms, the Lucases and the Morriseaus, and the ways their lives abound in parallels and paradoxes. John and Claire Lucas have two sons, James and Bill, but because of John's penchant for alcohol and violence, the boys often seek refuge with Ernie and Rosemary Morriseau. The Morriseaus are childless -- a bitter irony, since their loving, caring natures contrast so starkly with their neighbor's cruelty. John Lucas spends much of his time regaling bar patrons with tales of his World War II heroics -- but those stories are lies. Ernie Morriseau, on the other hand, fought bravely and honorably in the same war but has no desire to impress others with his battlefield exploits. Much is made in this novel of what it means to be a man, and John Lucas has his own standards -- all of which he fails to meet. He can't keep his tractor running or raise a successful crop -- unless liquor counts: He sows his fields with bottles, secret caches for emergencies. It falls to Ernie Morriseau, an Ojibwe but a character of sufficient complexity to be saved from stereotype, to teach the Lucas boys how to hunt and fish and how to be a man in the best sense of the word.But even the steady, centered lives of the Morriseaus become unbalanced when James joins the Marines. From experience, Ernie and Rosemary -- she was a nurse during World War II -- both know about combat's horrific effects. James is sent to Vietnam and is soon reported missing in action, vanished during an attack that it seems no one could possibly survive. He remains a presence in the novel, however, haunting the Lucases and the Morriseaus. His spirit has lessons that all of them must learn if their lives are to be productive and whole.James's younger brother certainly needs help. Bill, or Billy as he's often called, is the turtle warrior of the title, so named because as a boy he carried a makeshift shield, fashioned from the shell of a snapping turtle, and if anyone needs the protection of some kind of armor, he does. When his brother enlists, Billy feels abandoned and helpless. Caught in his own combat zone, he tries to defend his mother from his father's beatings, only to have John Lucas shift his sadism in Billy's direction. Tenderhearted and vulnerable, Billy is especially sensitive to animals and the natural world. Unfortunately, he has few skills that enable him to survive among humans. He inherits his father's tendency toward alcoholism, and the various attempts to restore Billy to his inherent goodness provide the novel with much of its drama.Point of view shifts from character to character, a particularly effective technique for dealing with people who harbor secrets. Sometimes the truth of an incident is apparent only after it's seen from another perspective. And while Ellis impressively imagines her way into quite different lives, the novel is most convincing in its small touches, especially those pertaining to rural Wisconsin life. Friday night fish fries, the "butter yellow light" of a farmhouse kitchen, the prance and bark of a fox in mating season, new snow welcomed in deer-hunting season, men measured by their competency with a fishing rod, a rifle or hammer -- all these and more attest to Ellis's bone-deep knowledge of her setting. The richness and authenticity of these details make one wish that the emotional behavior of the characters were equally believable. Actions that should be impulsive are sometimes improbably delayed. Ernie Morriseau, for example, after discovering a particularly horrible and graphic result of John Lucas's brutality, destroys his former neighbor's gravestone. But Ernie coolly drives a significant distance to buy a supply of baseball bats to do the job, and only after hours have passed does he begin to swing away. Although one of the novel's major themes is the danger of repressing feelings, men and women alike weep and rage in ways that simply don't seem consistent with their usual stoicism. Worse still, these displays are often accompanied by psychologizing of a too easy sort. Rosemary Morriseau is confident that her husband's despair will lift once he cries, and perhaps she's right, for in these pages, tears, whether occasioned by anger, pity or grief, have an almost magical power to transform and redeem.These problems may be more acute because of the novel's structural plan. While every facet of a single moment might be examined, decades can pass with the turn of a page. As a result, while the damaging effects of trying to push down pain and shame are plain, the actual struggles are insufficiently dramatized.These flaws might be typical of a first novelist who can't quite trust her talent. Once she does, her work is sure to gain the power and credibility that come from subtlety and restraint. Reviewed by Larry WatsonCopyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.
From Booklist
In Wisconsin's far north, an isolated family is torn by war from within and without. The father is a merciless, violent drunk. The mother is an intelligent, educated woman who fears she is losing her mind. Their older son is a gifted outdoorsman who escapes by joining the marines to fight in Vietnam. Their younger son is dreamy, introspective, and frighteningly vulnerable. Childless neighbors see the family's struggles and help as best they can. Told from many perspectives, this epic of the emotions explores themes of war, loss, and family, showing the paralysis of grief and the healing power of nature. It's unfortunate for Ellis that Oprah is now focusing on classics, as this first novel has all the types (alcoholic father, abused mother and children, sage Indian) and elements (addiction stories, a spirit presence, the formation of a nontraditional family) required for membership in the first incarnation of the talk show host's book club. Those who are drawn to these themes should find Ellis' debut a moving addition to the canon. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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