Book Review: How the Strong Survive

Reviewed By: Pat Reid - RAM

How the Strong Survive     Amazon US TPB Amazon Canada TPB
Newt Love
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Native American
Rockway Press, 2007, 312 pps.

Four girls, all different personalities and different occupations band together with one goal in mind. That goal is to find someone to kill the serial rapist that attacked them. Kelly Larson runs a daycare. Rita Cade owns a beauty salon. Maria Vacarro is a pediatrician. Lisa Towers works for Nifty Maids. The girls know who raped them and even got him into court but John Keagy is a serial rapist from a very wealthy family with a lot of influence and the lawyers his family obtained got him off. The four girls are not the only ones who have been raped by John Keagy. One girl even committed suicide.

A friend had directed the girls to Ben Pace, a Lakhota Priest. Ben does not work in conventional ways. His nature friends assist him along the way. Nor does he live in a conventional way. When the girls are invited into his home they step into a one of three geodesic domes which make up Ben’s home. The first one they enter is hide covered tipi. Ben believes that living in one helped his warrior-priest training.

After Ben hears their stories he agrees to help the girls but insists that they must be part of the whole thing in order to gain back what they lost when Keagy raped them.

Ben comes up with an elaborate plan and it seems that every detail has been worked out to perfection but the plan falls through. John Keagy’s family step in and intervene. But before the family intervened the girls got the opportunity to humiliate John in unbelievable ways.

Ben is not one to give up once he has made a promise and soon he has everything in motion to strike again. I was fascinated by the Lakhota beliefs and ways described in How The Strong Survive. I hope that there will be a follow-up book so I can read more about Ben.

Pat Reid - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Pat Reid - RAM