THE MADMAN OF PINEY WOODS

Curtis returns to early-twentieth-century Canada in this companion novel to ELIJAH OF BUXTON. In alternating chapters, JD Jackson voices Benji, an aspiring reporter and lover of the woods, and Kirby Heyborne voices Red, an Irish boy who lives in neighboring Chatham. Both narrators deliver the boys’ self-assuredness with relish, as well as their fear of encountering the “Madman of Piney Woods,” but they shine most in the voices of the adult characters. Jackson terrifies listeners by detachedly recounting the horrors of the Civil War as the Madman. Heyborne delivers a pitch-perfect Irish accent in the voice of Grandmother O’Toole.The care in both portrayals brings depth to Curtis’s theme of the varying ways hardships can shape or damage human beings. E.M.C. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2014]