James Braziel

Review: Snakeskin Road by James Braziel. 4 Stars 04/21/2019

This was a critical book written in post-Apocalyptic America about illegal immigrants in a fragmented America. The story was interesting, compelling, brutal and profound. The main character Jennifer, who is pregnant, lacks the capacity to solicit empathy from the reader as after nine years she travels back to join her mother in Chicago. Her husband was supposed to follow her but she knew he never would so she was on her own.

Later Jennifer finds herself more of a guardian to Mazel who was abandoned by her mother after the bus they were traveling in goes through a sudden sandstorm and flips over. Some passengers died and others struggled to stay alive in a barren environment. After some time they were picked up by a patrol and taken to a fortressed city where she finds a ride to take her north to her mother‘s but becomes captive and prisoner in a brothel where she miscarriages and Mazel attempts suicide.

Than the story moves on to a ruthless bounty hunter Rosser, pursues them for leaving the city. The story did hold my interest but it was a brutal adventure that I hope the world never comes too….… (més)

The story jumps back and forth over the life of the protagonist, Mathew Harrison. He is born in 2014, the year that dust storms sweep across the Gulf South, rendering it a desert wasteland, cut off from the "saved world" in Birmingham and beyond. He faces a crisis during his 30th year when his conceptions of loyalty and hope are both quickly unraveling.

Nicknamed "daydreamer", the protagonist has evocative visions of the past. They once gave him a taste of freedom and beauty, but become more and more a source of distraction and torment. Similarly the reader is bounced from scene to scene and can easily become disoriented as Braziel toils to explicate Harrison's personal mythology without indulging in much plot development.

The reader is rewarded, ultimately, for working through the first half of the book as he or she can better get into Harrison's mind and appreciate his crisis -- one which remains mysterious even to his friends and family. Having reached that foothold, however, it is unfortunate that Braziel withholds any kind of real payoff as the ending is inconclusive. Appropriate, perhaps, but unsatisfying.… (més)