Sweet and Vicious

July 26, 2004
In the much anticipated follow-up to 2001's Kissing in Manhattan
, his highly acclaimed story collection, Schickler tracks a pair of gloriously wacky, star-crossed young lovers on the lam from a gang of goons. Driving across the Great Plains in a stolen pick-up truck, loner thug Henry Dante and flame-haired temptress Grace McGlone are bent on giving away a set of seven famous stolen diamonds in a series of impetuous, extravagant gestures that are every bit as improbable as their relationship itself. From the omen-laden day that they first meet—when Grace walks through a car wash to introduce herself to Henry—Schickler rewinds to relate their vivid and bizarre backstories. Myriad off-kilter characters are entwined in the trajectory of Henry and Grace's month-long romance, including Grace's club-footed, treehouse-building classmate; the smarmy radio evangelist who deflowered her when she was 15 while whispering "God's will"; and the vengeful Chicago mobster who happens to be Henry's boss. Delightfully but believably nutty, Grace and Henry each have a precisely modulated moral code and a sense of honor forged in the weirdness and tragedy of their respective pasts. Though their largely innocent misadventure—think Bonnie and Clyde
as it might have been written by Tom Robbins—comes to a somewhat disappointingly tidy conclusion, the ride is more than worth the price of entry. Agent, Jennifer Carlson
.

Starred review from September 1, 2004
Like his short story collection " Kissing in Manhattan" (2001), Schickler's debut novel is filled with passion, violence, and human quirks. Henry Dante, a heavy for Chicago mobster Honey Pobrinkis, has been sent along with two of Pobrinkis' men to retrieve the "Planets," a set of seven valuable diamonds in the shape of seven of the planets, from an untrustworthy business associate. But when one of the mobsters, Honey's sleazy nephew, Roger, tries to rape the man's wife, Henry knocks Roger out and makes off with the Planets. He winds up in a small Wisconsin town where Grace McGlone, a beautiful, passionate redhead spots him and knows he's the one for her. She jumps in his truck and insists on coming with him, but she won't sleep with him until they're married. And when she finds out about the Planets, she insists they give them away to people they meet along their journey as they flee Honey and his goons. Schickler is a rare find; with straightforward and yet deeply insightful writing, he mixes love, violence, ardor, and humor in this funny and heartbreaking modern-day fable.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)