The Art of Crash Landing

July 6, 2015
Decarlo’s excellent debut chronicles what happens when 30-year-old Mattie Wallace finds herself unearthing family secrets in her mother’s hometown. Mattie remembers her deceased mother, Genie, as a broken alcoholic who dated a string of losers—save for Mattie’s erstwhile stepfather, Queeg, with whom she still has a relationship. After being identified as the only surviving heir to her estranged grandmother’s house, Mattie spends all her money and ventures to the small town of Gandy, Okla. Her deadbeat boyfriend, Nick, who keeps calling, doesn’t know that Mattie is pregnant with his child. DeCarlo manages to make her heroine endearing despite her many flaws: she creates clever private jokes with the reader and slips in the occasional heartbreaking memory between brash shows of pushiness. Luke, a kindly paralegal, allows Mattie to stay at her grandmother’s property while the legal kinks get worked out, and Mattie takes a job at the library. People in town recall Genie as a vibrant blonde who had a music scholarship—an image Mattie has trouble reconciling with the bitter redhead who raised her. With a little nosing around, Mattie manages to get to the bottom of why her mother suddenly left town and became who she was. DeCarlo’s writing bristles with Mattie’s vibrant personality. The book’s final pages feel somewhat rushed and condensed after the long, leisurely story that unfolds earlier, but this doesn’t detract from what is otherwise a triumphant first novel.

July 1, 2015
A journey into her mother's past helps a young woman right her own future. Mattie Wallace is pregnant, broke, and lost. After shoving all her possessions into trash bags, she leaves her old life behind and once again ends up at her ex-stepfather's door hoping for a little guidance. Herman Isaacs, or Captain Queeg as Mattie fondly calls him, remains dedicated to his stepdaughter, even after his divorce from Mattie's mother and her subsequent death. Though Queeg is glad to see Mattie, he's a bit miffed by her flakiness-it turns out Mattie's been ignoring phone calls, including one from a lawyer in her mother's hometown of Gandy, Oklahoma. Queeg tells Mattie that her maternal grandmother has passed away, and Mattie once again hits the road, eager to claim her inheritance. Of course, this doesn't prove to be easy. Once in Gandy, Mattie learns that her grandmother's estate is meager, multiple creditors have claims against it, and the legal proceedings will take three months. For the time being, Mattie is given the key to her grandmother's house and ownership of two dogs, both named Winston. Mattie's mom was always a troublesome mystery who struggled with alcohol addiction and other unknown demons; and since her sudden death years earlier, Mattie's many questions about her past have remained unanswered. In Gandy, Mattie is forced to make sense of her mother's character and begins to understand the circumstances that led her mother to leave her life and family behind. Mattie's voice is fresh, her penchant for off-color language balanced with a revealing earnestness and vulnerability. Gandy's other residents are vibrant and well-developed, from stern library director Fritter Jackson, who's obsessed with obscuring the past, to JJ, a persistently surly neighbor. DeCarlo's debut is confident and accomplished, filled with heart and humor.

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September 1, 2015

Mattie Wallace didn't mean to end up like her mother, but at 30 she's pregnant, broke, and on the run. While crashing at her stepfather's trailer, she receives a phone call from a law office in her (dead) mother's hometown of Gandy, OK. She barely makes it to town before her beat-up old car breaks down. While it's in the shop, Mattie speaks with Luke Lambert, the law firm's paralegal, and learns that she has inherited a house, money, and two dogs from her grandmother, whom she never met. The funds aren't available for three months, so she takes that time to learn who her grandmother was and what caused her mother to leave town when she was a teenager. VERDICT DeCarlo bursts on the scene with a fascinating, mysterious novel. The pacing is excellent and the prose fluid as the story unfolds in a combination of flashbacks and present-day scenes. This debut is thick with secrets; it will cause readers to question everyone and everything. The author does an outstanding job combining suspense with heartache, adding a dash of romance and, at the end, hope.--Erin Holt, Williamson Cty. P.L., Franklin, TN

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2015
Thirty-year-old Mattie Wallace is a self-described ninja when it comes to screwing things up. Daughter of a single mother who died five years earlier, she's close only to her former stepfather, a man she calls Queeg. Broke and pregnant, she storms out on her latest boyfriend in the Florida panhandle and takes off for small-town Oklahoma, where her maternal grandmother recently died. But the transmission in her 1978 Chevy Malibu dies, and her grandmother's estate is not readily available. Fortunately, the kindness of strangers, most of whom knew her mother, kicks in, giving Mattie the opportunity to uncover secrets, answer family questions, and ferret out her tangled ancestry. First novelist DeCarlo deftly weaves in flashbacks about Mattie's childhood and creates a cast of wonderfully full-blooded, fallible characters, from kind and ailing Queeg to Karleen, Mattie's mother's closest childhood friend, to potty-mouthed Goth teenager Tawny, the summer project of a no-nonsense librarian. Best of all is Mattie herself, who has cultivated a measure of humanity in addition to impressive survival skills and whose briskly told story is instantly involving. An impressive debut.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)