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Mary Elizabeth MacKay was always the wild child in the family. At the age of 15, she ran off with a local immigrant wine grower named Nick DeCosta, which caused a permanent estrangement from her family, who runs the show in the small New England town of Peony Springs. The economy relies heavily on the contributions of Granny MacKay, whois a moonshiner. With Prohibition in full effect in the early 1920s, Granny has become a force to be reckoned with. One evening at a local dance for the teens in the area, Angus MacKay takes exception to the fact that Angus DeCosta, a very hunky 15-year-old, has ended up in the bushes with Jackie Sue Palmer. The result is that MacKay attempts to drown DeCosta, and Jackie Sue runs away from home. When Angus's father, Nick, tries to retaliate, he ends up on the wrong end of a noose, strung up by the local Ku Klux Klan contingent. Now the law, in the hands of Marshal Ichabod Lawe, must attempt to render justice for the murder. It's not so easy to obtain cooperation from such an ingrown town, particularly when the county prosecutor, Big Bill Sykes, is only interested in advancing his own political agenda. There's a slew of quirky characters who populate the book and add some very entertaining elements to the story. Each chapter in the book is told from the point of view of a different character. Randall has excelled at creating some excellent character vignettes. Each narrator is compellingly drawn and very individual, with a distinctive voice. The only problem that I had with this approach was when he carried the concept too far and dedicated chapters to a dog and a crow. I actually could not read the chapters narrated by the dog: Chief not bad dog, Chief good dog, sniff her more. She push head, she not strong. Chief strong, not move head. She afraid. I also had difficulty with the phonetic reproduction of the dialogue of one of the characters - it took me a long time to get 'miscegenation' out of 'miss-skidge-anation', for example. Overall, I really enjoyed BLOOD HARVEST. It was refreshing to read a 'non-thriller', and I found the book very entertaining. Of interest is the fact that Randall based the book on true incidents in his family's past. In fact, in the prologue, he states that he had to omit things that actually occurred for fear that they wouldn't be believable.
Reviewed by Maddy Van Hertbruggen, May 2008
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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