The Other Joseph

May 18, 2015
This exciting, well-plotted sophomore novel from Horack (The Eden Hunter) explores how war affects the lives of two close-knit brothers. The novel begins with a note from Tommy Joseph, who joined the Navy SEALs, ended up in the Gulf War, and was officially declared dead when he disappeared. Tommy introduces the reader to the memoir of his kid brother, Roy. Roy's globe-trotting trip begins when he receives an unexpected email from a woman named Joni, who claims the missing Tommy is her biological father, but Roy's attempts to reach her fail. Hoping to reconnect with his disappeared brother, Roy leaves Louisiana for San Francisco, where Joni lives with her standoffish poet mother, Nancy. However, Roy is a registered sex offender (he slept with a 16-year-old when he was 19), and can only travel out of his home state temporarily. En route, he visits Tommy's SEAL friend, the unforgettable Lionel Purcell (who's worthy of his own book), in Nevada. Lionel advises against the trip, and Roy's plans don't go as he hoped once he reaches San Francisco. Horack delivers satisfying plot turns and shows great empathy for his troubled protagonist, Roy, who only seeks to honor the memory of his big brother Tommy.

February 15, 2015
In Horack's (The Eden Hunter, 2010, etc.) latest, Roy Joseph learns that "grief never leaves, it just mutates."Roy and his beloved older brother, Thomas, had an idyllic rural Louisiana childhood. With loving, "almost hippie-type" schoolteacher parents, education was key. Instead, golden-boy Tom joined the Navy SEALs, only to disappear during the first Gulf War. Family stumbling through recovery, Roy entered LSU. Then a grief counselor knocked and "told of a slick bridge and a flipped car and a deep creek." At 19, Roy went home to settle his parents' affairs and slept with his 16-year-old neighbor. Her parents turned vengeful, and Roy became an on-parole registered sex offender. He retreated to the Gulf's offshore oil rigs, realizing he'd "come to prefer the comfort and security of seclusion over the uncertainty of the unknown." Then, after a distracting email, an electric winch cost Roy his little finger. The email was from a California teen, Joni, who claimed to be Tom's daughter, thus for lonely Roy, "a foundling left by gods to prove they exist." In a beat-up Chrysler LeBaron, Roy began a Kerouac-style journey of discovery. Introverted and cautious, guilt-plagued and aware of his frailties, Roy believed he was playing "a cosmic chess match" to reconnect to normality. Memorable characters live on every page-some major, like empathetic burnt-out former SEAL Purcell, alone in Nevada's Ruby Mountains, and Viktor, a Russian immigrant marriage broker; others minor, like a clerk with a "nose shriveled like a dried fig" or "a tough old bastard" wearily posting flyers seeking a missing, drug-addled grandson. Bracketed by stunning revelations, Horack's luminous tale offers perceptive insights about the elemental connections of family.

March 1, 2015
This short novel, which will remind some of the muscular writing of Jim Harrison or Daniel Woodrell, tells of the Joseph brothers. Tommy, the older, is missing and presumed dead during the Gulf War. Roy is informed of his sibling's possibly heroic disappearance by a colleague present at the time. Years later, Roy is contacted by a young woman claiming to be Tommy's daughter, the result of a one-night stand in San Francisco, prompting Roy to embark on a search for the truth, which leads to romance (a Russian marriage broker plays a role), an encounter with his college-age niece, and, perhaps, some self-knowledge. As with road novels of this sort, there are cars, guns, and dogs aplenty, but Horack keeps the action moving and the characters believable. The ending is not unexpected but is tied up nicely. Horack is a promising author, befitting a former Wallace Stegner fellow.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)