Zemsta

by Victoria Brown

Overview

What Drives Good People to Do Something Bad? As terrible revelations come to light, four people join together to commit an unspeakable act... When a member of the privileged upper class frames a Polish immigrant for a socialite's murder in 1920s Akron, the heart-pounding events that follow lead to a stunning and unexpected conclusion. This gripping tale of bigotry and class distinctions includes political corruption, greed, injustice, murder, and betrayal. While Albo Jablonski endures the atrocious conditions of the state penitentiary, his son Nickels, daughter Antonia, and their friends Kurt and Charlie are tormented by the knowledge that he is innocent. Zemsta is a powerful, character-driven story of three boyhood friends during the tumultuous days of Prohibition that explores the meaning of friendship, family, love, and loyalty.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780985439118
Publisher:	Woodchuck Publishers
Publication date:	05/11/2012
Pages:	274
Product dimensions:	5.08(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.58(d)

About the Author

Victoria Brown worked in the marketing communications industry for over thirty years, most recently as President of her own firm, Victoria Brown Marketing Communications. VBMC clients covered a wide range of industries and included Motorola, The Boston Globe, Citrix, CBS SportsLine, Vitacost, and Liberty Mutual.

Brown grew up in northwestern Pennsylvania (North East) and has a degree from the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. She lived in Scituate on the south shore of Boston for many years.

She has two grown daughters and is currently basking in the sun in Boca Raton, Florida where she lives with her two miniature dachshunds Tallulah and Harriet and a cat named Puppy. Zemsta is her first novel.

Editorial Reviews

Prohibition-era Akron, Ohio, with its brutal factory conditions, corrupt wealth, and harsh class relations, offers the backdrop for this novel about immigrants attempting to maintain the bonds of childhood friendship as life pull them apart. Albert "Nickels" Jablonski’s family is thrown into chaos when his father, Albo, is framed for a murder at the country club where he works. Then Kurt Becker—Nickels’s pal who lives with his mother and aunt at the boardinghouse they run—gets a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: Russell Cantrell, the rich businessman for whom Kurt caddies, offers to pay for his college education. Over the years, Kurt and Nickels drift apart. Kurt becomes Cantrell’s protégé, while Nickels—now a reporter—and his policeman friend Charlie O’Brien continue to look for the evidence to clear Albo Jablonski. Although Brown has assembled all the right ingredients for a gritty historical novel, he fails to deliver. The book’s characters are underdeveloped—the villains simplistically evil; the heroes straightforward, hardworking, and virtuous—and the narrative is without enough tension to engage readers.

Publishers Weekly

Brown's debut novel recounts how a young woman's murder affects the lives of childhood friends. In the early-20th century, three adolescent boys--Nickels, Kurt and Charlie--are the most loyal of chums. They each face their share of hardships, but none so difficult as Nickels' father's imprisonment for a murder he didn't commit. The man was a father to all three boys; Charlie's dad is a hapless drunk, and Kurt lost his father at a young age to pneumonia. Life goes on, inside and outside prison walls, until the friends learn that revenge against the real killer is in sight. The account is narrated by Nicky's granddaughter, who gathered the information from her family. This approach adds a sense of authenticity and casts the tale as a recollection. Characters seem to arrive already defined, as they would in memory. The three boys are the indisputable heroes, and the villains are blatantly evil--Russell Cantrell, a rich lawyer who's introduced as he accuses someone else for a crime he committed (he's only 13 at the time), and his assistant/chauffeur, Voigt, whose hands are dirty almost from the get-go. The murder is incidental to the narrative, and the murderer's identity is never really in question. Still, a generous amount of suspense comes with the revelation of the victim's name and the exact date and location of the murder. The novel recreates an era as it follow the boys' lives from World War I through their adulthood and into the Great Depression. Several issues faced by the characters are still relevant today, such as corruption and bigotry--Nicky and his Polish family are often vulgarly called "Polacks." But it is the portrayal of real-world history--the height of Prohibition, the early days of cinema--that makes the book such a gem. A nostalgic, authentic novel that charms with its vintage hue.

Kirkus Reviews