The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne

De: Ron Currie

Narrado por: Lisa Flanagan

“Literary thrillers just don’t come any better than Ron Currie’s The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne. It’s profoundly serious and terrifying in equal measure.” –Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Somebody's Fool

A mythic, propulsive novel about the tangled fates of a matriarchal crime family in Maine.

Your ancestors breathe through you. Sometimes, they call for vengeance.

Babs Dionne, proud Franco-American, doting grandmother, and vicious crime matriarch, rules her small town of Waterville, Maine, with an iron fist. She controls the flow of drugs into Little Canada with the help of her loyal lieutenants, girlfriends since they were teenagers, and her eldest daughter, Lori, a Marine vet struggling with addiction.

When a drug kingpin discovers that his numbers are down in the upper northeast, he sends a malevolent force, known only as The Man, to investigate. At the same time, Babs's youngest daughter, Sis, has gone missing, which doesn't seem at all like a coincidence. In twenty-four hours, Sis will be found dead, and the whole town will seek shelter from Babs’s wrath.

The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne is a crime saga like no other, with a ferocious matriarch at its bruised, beating heart. With sharp wit and profound empathy, award-winning author Ron Currie, delivers an unforgettable novel exploring love, retribution, and the ancestral roots that both nurture and trap us.

It was difficult to listen to because of all of the hurt, addiction, poverty and racism,but it was compelling

That it was dealing with difficult topics that are all to present in rural areas as businesses move out

Loved it

I met Mr. Curry at the airport in Wichita,Ks. We discussed books and I bought his book. I enjoyed it.

Compelling Realty

One of the best novels ever read! The characters and story lines so real. Performance put you in the action. This author is a master smith of descriptive phrases!!

Pretty exceptional, especially for this transplant

I came to Maine in 1974, having grown up in New Jersey till 1970 and then living briefly in Colorado and Vermont. I was familiar with racism, but I'd no sense that the Franco-American population occupied the niche that the African-American occupied in New Jersey. Ron Currie has written a book from the inside of the Franco-American experience, with almost entirely female characters, that made me long to have had a family that cared so much about each other and felt so connected to their larger community. I especially liked the vicious portrayals of the white protestant gentry and realized that I had met those caricatures in the flesh. I'm pretty impatient with a lot of contemporary novels, but not this one.

So good

Wowza, love this story. The characters were great, love all women and how they were truly the responsible ones. and reading was spectacular

Mainiacs Marcia

I liked the story & characters. Reader was excellent in all aspects of story. Novel story of woman with a deep hatred for her abuse by corrupt policeman.

Love in all its heart breaking forms

Disliked all the swear words but recognize that profuse swearing is part of the American culture now!

amazing generational and cultural story of women surviving

loved this story and the amazing cultural picture painted by the author. struggles of poor and making a living despite oppression

Great Author, Great Book, Great Narrator

Ron Currie Jr. is already one of my favorite authors. I’ve never read anything of his that I didn’t like. If I had to describe his genre, I guess it would be sharp, modern, dark comedy-ish?

I really hope someone picks this book up for a movie. The way he paints rural Maine is spot-on, and his characters are deeply human and intense.

The book is a bit is strange, which I love. It is a bot violent, but only for the right reasons. It’s darkly funny in all the right ways. The dialogue feels real, the pacing moves along nicely, and the whole thing lingers with you—in that quiet, unsettling way Currie does so well.

Love strong women! Babs is a work of fictional art!

Such a good listen on the way to sin city. Loved the narrator loved the story