Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus More


Book Tour & Giveaway: King of Rags by Eric Bronson

Posted by Teddyrose@1 on February 28, 2014
Posted in Book Tours  | 1 Comment

Author Bio:
Eric Bronson teaches philosophy in the Humanities Department at York University in Toronto. He is the editor of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), Poker and Philosophy (Open Court,2006), Baseball and Philosophy (Open Court, 2004), and co-editor of The Hobbit and Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), and The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy (Open Court, 2003). In 2007 he served as the “Soul Trainer” for the CBC radio morning show, “Sounds Like Canada.” His current project is a book called The Dice Shooters, based loosely on his experiences dealing craps in Las Vegas.
Author Links – The link for any or all
of the following…
 
Book Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Neverland
Publishing
Release Date: May, 2013
Buy Link(s): Amazon
 
Book Description:
King of Rags follows the life of Scott Joplin and his fellow ragtime musicians as they frantically transform the seedy and segregated underbelly of comedians, conmen and prostitutes who called America’s most vibrant cities home. Inspired by Booker T. Washington and the Dahomeyan defeat in West Africa, Joplin was ignored by the masses for writing the music of Civil Rights fifty years before America was ready to listen.
 
Excerpt:
 
Whenever he had a difficult decision to make, Scott set himself up on the small hill with high grass and wildflowers. In the starlight he was especially careful not to disturb the patient, purple flowers. A traveling white schoolteacher once read to his class the story of the heliotrope from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Derided by the world and scorned by her lover the Sun God, a poor
nymph keeps her eyes ever fixed to the sun. Streaked with purple, she
is covered in leaves and flowers, roots that claw their way around
her helplessness, forever binding her to the earth.
 
“‘An excess of passion begets an excess of grief,’” the schoolteacher quoted.
“Don’t reach so high. You’ll be much happier if you lower your sights.”
 
But there was something about the nymph’s undying faith that touched him inside.
She refused to be stuck here in this world, and that refusal brought
hope along with the pain. Scott thought he understood the nymph’s
eternal conflict. His music wouldn’t right the wrong, but it might
help ease the loss. Long after the sun abandoned her, Scott sat among
the heliotrope and played for her his coronet.
 
The hill had a further advantage: it overlooked the new train station. He was there
one December day, ten years earlier, when the first Texas &
Pacific railway pulled in from Dallas, on its way to Fulton,
Arkansas. Since then his father had taught him to play the violin,
banjo and coronet, but none of them could take him beyond his
colorless world. Maybe the trains couldn’t either, but the tracks
held that promise, going outwards, ever away. His mother believed the
coronet was the Devil’s instrument. Scott disagreed. Any instrument that brought relief to
others was useful. It shouldn’t much matter who was dancing at the
other end.
 
Under the wavering light of a half-moon, Scott played with all the sounds of the night:
the high-pitched melody of cicada bugs over the running bass line of
lumber cars and freight trains, garbage crates and short hauls
sounding their syncopated iron rhythms: boom-chugga
boom-boom: boomchugga
boom-boom.
The music of the night trains was the sound of waiting—waiting and
waning and wasting away. The greatest secrets in life, Scott knew,
lay not in the music or the people who played it, but in the short, silent spaces that sometimes fell unexpectedly off the beat. The Stop Man taught him that without hardly even saying
a word.

 

Today it is my please to kick off the second tour for Running With the Enemy By Lloyd Lofthouse!

Book Description:

Publisher: Three Clover Press (February 1, 2013)
Category: Vietnam War, Action/Adventure, Suspense/Thriller
Tour Dates: March 2014
Available in: Print and ebook 384 Pages

Awarded Runner Up in General Fiction at the 2013 Beach Book Festival. Awarded honorable mention general fiction 2013 New York Book Festival!

In this suspense thriller set during the Vietnam War, Victor Ortega is a rogue CIA agent, and he needs someone to blame for his crimes. Recon Marine Ethan Card is the perfect patsy. As a teen, Ethan ran with a Chicago street gang, and he has a criminal record. He also has a secret lover, Tuyen, who is half Vietnamese and half French.

Tuyen is a stunning, beautiful Viet Cong resistance fighter.

Since she was a young child, Tuyen has lived under the control of her brutal, older, sexually abusive half-brother, Giap, a ruthless and powerful Viet Cong leader, who has forced her to kill Americans in battle or die if she refuses.

When Ethan discovers he is going to be court marshaled for weapons he did not sell to the Viet Cong and Tuyen will be arrested and end up in an infamous South Vietnamese prison, where she will be tortured and raped, he hijacks a U.S. Army helicopter and flees with Tuyen across Southeast Asia while struggling to prove his innocence.

Victor Ortega and Giap—working together with the support of an unwitting American general—will stop at nothing to catch the two, and the hunt is on.

The star-crossed lovers travel across Laos to Cambodia’s Angkor Wat; to Bangkok, Thailand, and then to Burma’s Golden Triangle where Ethan and Tuyen face a ruthless drug lord and his gang.

In the rainforests of Burma, Ethan also discovers Ortega and Giap have set in motion a massive assault on his Marine unit’s remote base in South Vietnam with the goal of killing the man he admires most, Colonel Edward Price, who is the only one who believes Ethan is innocent.

Ethan must risk everything to save Price and his fellow Marines. Will he succeed?

Read Chapter One.

Praise for Running With the Enemy:

Lloyd Lofthouse describes his book Running with the Enemy as a memoir that evolved into fiction. As a Vietnam veteran who had seen and experienced enough to leave him with post traumatic stress disorder, he wrote this book it seems to come to terms with all he experienced in Vietnam. The book became fiction, an action novel with a strong romance component.
Overall it rings true of war and what it was like to serve in Vietnam. Much of the book details the fighting, the casualties and the heartbreak and the trauma experienced by the soldiers. The book also takes you on a dizzying journey when the lovers Tuyen and Ethan flee to other countries in Southeast Asia – Laos, Cambodia, Bangkok, Thailand ,and Burma (Myanmar).
For those who would like to get a sense of what combat was really like, this is an excellent book, which began as a memoir of Vietnam.“- Book Dilettante

“I found Running with the Enemy captivating and well worth reading and enjoyed such a different type of historical novel from Mr. Lofthouse than his previous. Since Mr. Lofthouse is a former Marine and Vietnam veteran, I am sure he drew from some of his personal experiences and I shudder to think of some of these experiences.”– M. Denise C.

”Running With the Enemy is a gut-wrenching page-turner at once a historical rendering of the Vietnam-American war, a suspense-thriller involving the framing of an innocent man forced to go on the run, and a passionate love story.  As an historical novel, it renders an intricate tapestry of the era, the geography, and the several cultures in confrontation at that time. As a suspense-thriller it grips on page one and keeps your heart racing page after page with hardly a paragraph of relief. As a war story, it depicts war as the bloody, hell that it is–a place in which the mettle of the honorable is tested and honed in the same landscape where sociopaths thrive and reach the heights of power and influence.   As a love story, it portrays the way a bond between two hearts can transcend race, religion, politics, national identity and family loyalty, defying all convention, tradition, prejudice and law to claim their right to have each other.
The characters are all deftly drawn and believable and if they exist beyond a page or two they will leave their mark on the reader who has come to care about them whether it is to love them, admire them, hate them or simply be amused by them.  I can wholeheartedly recommend Running With the Enemy as a story that rewards the time and effort invested. Its impact will linger long after the last page is turned.”-Joystory

“Running with the Enemy was everything and more than I was expecting. First off, the way Lloyd had everything under control from the plot and setting to the character developments and the historical elements that were added. Everything was extremely vivid, as if I was experiencing it first-hand.
Now talking about the extremely sexual love affair between Ethan and Tuyen felt so real that I actually cried at times throughout reading Lloyd’s Running with the Enemy. Speaking of crazy relationships, that Victor Ortega man. I really didn’t like him from the start, but who likes bad guys?
Running with the Enemy is an adventure that definitely isn’t suitable for younger children, but mainly for adults due to the extreme sex and violence. With that being said, I absolutely LOVED Lloyd’s novel and I honestly can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.”-A Book and Latte

Read My Review: https://theteddyrosebookreviewsplusmore.com/?s=running+with+the+enemy

About Lloyd Lofthouse:

Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam veteran, served in Vietnam as a field radio operator in 1966. Back home, Lloyd was a heavy drinker until 1981, never talked about the war and suffered from PTSD. In the early 1980s, he confronted his demons by writing about his war experiences in an MFA program.

Running with the Enemy started as a memoir and then evolved into fiction.

His short story, A Night at the “Well of Purity”, named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards, was based on an event Lloyd experienced in Vietnam.

His novel My Splendid Concubine has earned ten honorable mentions in general fiction—a few examples: the 2008 London Book Festival; 2009 San Francisco Book Festival; 2009 Los Angeles Book Festival, and the 2012 New York Book Festival, etc.

In 1999, his wife, Anchee Min, the author of the memoir Red Azalea, a book that was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1994, introduced Lloyd to Robert Hart, the real-life character of My Splendid Concubine.

After an honorable discharge from the U.S. Marines in 1968, Lloyd went to college on the GI Bill to earn a BA in journalism, and then worked days as a public school teacher for thirty years (1975 – 2005) in addition to nights and weekends as a maître d’ in a Southern California nightclub called the Red Onion (1980-1982).

Loyd’s Website: http://lloydlofthouse.org/

Lloyd on Twitter: https://twitter.com/lflwriter
Lloyd of Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lloyd.lofthouse

Buy Running With the Enemy: (Kindle on sale for $0.98)

Amazon
BarnesandNoble
BookDepository

Thanks to the author, Lloyd Lofthouse, I am giving away one copy of Running With the Enemy.  This giveaway is open internationally.  If in the U.S., there is the choice of choice of print, mobi, epub, or pdf.  If outside the U.S., ebook only.  Please use Rafflecopter to enter.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Follow the Tour:

So Many Precious Books Feb 27 Spotlight & Giveaway
Deal Sharing Aunt Mar 4 Review
Deal Sharing Aunt Mar 5 Guest Post
The New In Books Mar 5 Review
The New In BooksMar 12 Interview
Margay Leah Justice Mar 10 Guest Post
Reader’s Muse Mar 10 Review
Reader’s Muse Mar 11 Interview & Giveaway
Ordinary Girls Mar 13 Review
Identity Discovery Mar 14 Guest Post & Giveaway
Cheryl’s Book Nook Mar 17 Review & Giveaway
Every Free Chance Mar 20 Review
Sapphyria’s Book Reviews Mar 21 Guest Post & Giveaway
Sir Read-A-Lot Mar 24 Review & Guest Post
Cassandra M’s Place Mar 25 Review & Giveaway


I have always wanted to travel around the world but I haven’t had the chance.  I’ve never been outside of North America.  I hope to have the chance one day but until then, I consider my self an armchair traveller via books and film.  I love books that take place in other countries so I jumped at the chance to review Korean Word For Butterfly.

Book Description:

Publisher: Create Space, March 27, 2013
ISBN-13:  978-1483997476
Category: Literary Fiction, South Korean Society
Tour Dates: February, 2014
Available in: Print & ebook329 pages

Set against the backdrop of the 2002 World Cup and rising anti-American sentiment due to a deadly accident involving two young Korean girls and a U.S. tank, The Korean Word For Butterfly is told from three alternating points-of-view:

Billie, the young wanna-be poet looking for adventure with her boyfriend who soon finds herself questioning her decision to travel so far from the comforts of American life;

Moon, the ex K-pop band manager who now works at the English school struggling to maintain his sobriety in hopes of getting his family back;

And Yun-ji , a secretary at the school whose new feelings of resentment toward Americans may lead her to do something she never would have imagined possible.

The Korean Word For Butterfly is a story about the choices we make and why we make them.

It is a story, ultimately, about the power of love and redemption.

My Thoughts:

As the book opens, Billie and her boyfriend Joe just arrive in South Korea and are greeted at the airport by Moon.  They are expected to start work that same day and are taken to meet the other staff and instructors from the school they are to teach English at.  As the story progresses we learn that the two have a secret that, if it came out, would most likely cause an early dismissal, perhaps more.  We also find out that Moon and Yun-ji also carry secrets.

When we first meet people in person, we often form a first impression before they even speak. Then we modify that impression as we get to know the real person.  However, with books it can be a slower period of introduction. It took awhile for the characters in The Korean Word For Butterfly to develop enough to get to know them.  I enjoyed the processes from the beginning. From just learning there names, an out of focus picture started to pop in my head and slowly focused as the story progressed.  It was kind of like talking on the phone with a person I haven’t met face to face.

The location in South Korea became another character and developed more fully as the pages turned.  I felt like I was there as one of the U.S. or Canadian instructors teaching English to little children.  I experienced the hostility of the South Koreans when the U.S. tank ran over the two children.  That was how well written the book was.  James Zerndt rolled out the words in poetic prose.  The only thing the bugged, until I got use to it was the change in narrator when it was Moon’s turn.  He didn’t narrate himself, like the other characters.  Yet I could see why he couldn’t.

This was a very emotional book to read.  It really delved into the characters feelings and controversies. If you aren’t even willing to consider abortion as a choice, this book is probaly not for you.  Though from my prospective, it didn’t answer if it was right or wrong but the physical and emotional consequences of going through with it or not.  It allowed the reader to form their own opinion, which is the way I think it should be.

This was a book that I couldn’t put down and was sad to see end.  I highly recommend The Korean Word For Butterfly.

5/5

I downloaded the Kindle version when it was free on Amazon.  After receiving an email from the author.  No matter how I obtain a book, I give my honest opinion.

About James Zerndt:

James Zerndt lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and son. His poetry has appeared in The Oregonian Newspaper, and his fiction has most recently appeared in Gray’s Sporting Journal. He taught English in South Korea in 2002 and still loves kimchi.

Jamie’s short story, “The Tree Poachers”, recently won WCCHA’s fiction award. Some of his short stories have also won Honorable Mention in both Playboy’s and The Atlantic Monthly’s Fiction Contests.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/JamesZerndt
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZerndtJ
Google+: https://plus.google.com/107437037060168201663/posts?partnerid=gplp0

Buy Korean Word For Butterfly:

Amazon

There is still time to enter to win either a print or ebook copy of A Korean Word for Butterfly> You can use Rafflecopter to enter on the following post: https://theteddyrosebookreviewsplusmore.com/2014/02/book-tour-giveaway-korean-word-for-butterfly-by-jamie-zerndt.html#.UwqqQvldXh4