Thursday, November 2, 2017

The Standard Grand


The Standard Grand  by Jay Baron Nicorvo    368 pages

I was excited when I obtained a copy of Nicorvo’s debut novel. Set in 2012, it’s the story of a halfway house for homeless veterans suffering from PTSD and located in an abandoned Catskills (NY) resort.

One of the vets, Antebellum Smith, is actually AWOL from her post in Fort Leonard Wood. She can’t face a third deployment to Iraq and is sick and tired of her deadbeat civilian husband. She makes the trek from the Missouri Ozarks to Manhattan. She’d rather sleep in the park than go back.

She meets Milton Wright, a Vietnam vet and widower. Milt’s late wife’s family once owned the derelict property.

That was as much as I could decipher in this convoluted tale. There is a huge cast of characters, but thankfully, Nicorvo provides a list of who’s who before the story even starts. Most of the book is written in military lingo that was easy to figure out what it was, but for me it slowed the story down.

This work has been getting rave reviews, but it didn’t click with me. Every book had its reader(s), but this one isn’t for me. The Standard Grand gets 1 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

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