Author: David Duchovny
Genre: General Fiction
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication Date: February 2, 2021
Book Description: From the New York Times–bestselling author David Duchovny, an epic adventure that asks how we make sense of right and wrong in a world of extremes
For the past twenty years, Bronson Powers, former Hollywood stuntman and converted Mormon, has been homesteading deep in the uninhabited desert outside Joshua Tree with his three wives and ten children. Bronson and his wives, Yalulah, Mary, and Jackie, have been raising their family away from the corruption and evil of the modern world. Their insular existence—controversial, difficult, but Edenic—is upended when the ambitious young developer Maya Abbadessa stumbles upon their land. Hoping to make a profit, she crafts a wager with the family that sets in motion a deadly chain of events.
Maya, threatening to report the family to social services, convinces them to enter three of their children into a nearby public school. Bronson and his wives agree that if Maya can prove that the kids do better in town than in their desert oasis, they will sell her a chunk of their priceless plot of land. Suddenly confronted with all the complications of the twenty-first century that they tried to keep out of their lives, the Powerses must reckon with their lifestyle as they try to save it.
Truly Like Lightning, David Duchovny’s fourth novel, is a heartbreaking meditation on family, religion, sex, greed, human nature, and the vanishing environment of an ancient desert.
Rating: 4 1/2 Stars
Review: This is the first book I have read by David Duchovny, and now I want to tear through his backlist. The story that he wrote was so unexpected and brilliant, I could not put it down.
Taking place in Joshua Tree, California, Bronson Powers in a former stuntman now living a polygamist life with his wives and 10 kids. Nobody knows they exist and they are able to live the life they want to live. Maya is introduced when she stumbles onto this land and wants to purchase it for her company to develop.
Of course Bronson does not want to sell his property, which is worth roughly 100 million dollars and it is their ticket to the freedom they want. Maya comes up with a plan, she will not go to child services if they enter into an experiment. Some of his children need to move to the city and go to public school for 1 year to see if they are more successful in school or being taught at their home.
This perpetuates this really smart fast-paced novel. The kids that go to the city have been a life with little technology and any pop culture. Duchovny bring in politics in a very non-evasive way. When an incident occurs with one of the children, the book takes a 180 that you will never see coming.
This is typically not my usual story, but I am so glad I read this. I absolutely can envision this being converted to a movie or mini-series as it was so cinematic. If you have not read David Duchovny before, like me, this might be a great place to start.
Thank you NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Obsessed Bookaholic 