c.2026, Poisoned Pen Press
\n$18.99
\n304 pages<\/p>\n
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
\nThe Truth Contributor<\/p>\n
Finally, after so much work, you\u2019ve left your past behind.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what you tell yourself: what\u2019s done is done and you can\u2019t undo history. It\u2019s over. You try not to think about last month, last year, a decade back because what does it matter? As in the new novel, Laws of Solomon<\/em> by Eriq La Salle,<\/strong> remembering is too full of pain.<\/p>\n The monsters that came to him early in his sleep were the easy ones. It was the later demons that stole Solomon Nangobi\u2019s sleep, the spirits of all the people he killed when he was a child soldier in Uganda, and when he was a fixer in New York as an adult. Their ghosts called to him with urgent voices, though he left that life behind long ago.<\/p>\n Now his days were filled working the soil in gardens near Malibu, and he loved the quite life. Still, he kept his guns.<\/p>\n And he was glad: when Solomon recognized two Zeta gunmen stalking a well-dressed man, woman, and child through the gardens, he couldn\u2019t walk away. He stopped the gangsters with bullets, but not before the adults and their bodyguards were dead. The child, an eight-year-old boy named Gaby, was safe, but Gaby couldn\u2019t tell Solomon what was going on.<\/p>\n What became quickly certain, however, was that Solomon was now Gaby\u2019s guardian, and the Zeta crime boss wanted them dead, too.<\/p>\n When he was the same age as Gaby, Solomon saw unspeakable things, the murder of his parents, the destruction of his homeland, and the atrocities that Idi Amin\u2019s soldiers committed. He learned to kill, he observed, and he was hardened, understanding as a small boy that revenge was often necessary and needed, and that blood would shed at those times. But Gaby was pure, an innocent, a child.<\/p>\n Solomon reached out to his contacts to try to get the boy to safety, but being a contact of a marked man was likewise a dangerous thing: the monsters outside were worse than the ones inside him…<\/p>\n Two words for you: Whoo weee. That\u2019s what you\u2019re going to say when you close the back cover of Laws of Solomon<\/em>, knowing that you\u2019ve just been taken on a wild up-and-down, around-and-round ride.<\/p>\n Author Eriq La Salle makes it impossible not to like Solomon, an African man who has, over time, lost nearly everything dear to him and who has no faith in much of anything. Readers get that part of the story eventually, and there\u2019s historical authenticity in some of it, but we never really get to know Solomon, which makes the book feel dark and dangerous. Along the way, we meet and get to know his helpers, which buoys Solomon\u2019s chase to find safety for the boy, and your heart won\u2019t stop pounding.<\/p>\n Keep in mind that this is a thriller partially set in 1970s Uganda, so expect lots of violence but don\u2019t expect a lot of people to live. If you\u2019re up for that, find Laws of Solomon<\/em>. You won\u2019t be able to leave it behind.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" c.2026, Poisoned Pen Press $18.99 304 pages By Terri Schlichenmeyer The Truth Contributor Finally, after so much work, you\u2019ve left your past behind. That\u2019s what you tell yourself: what\u2019s done is done and you can\u2019t undo history. It\u2019s over. You try not to think about last month, last year, a decade back because what does […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20781,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[20],"class_list":["post-20780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book_review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20780"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20782,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20780\/revisions\/20782"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20780"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=20780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}